
Glass lU £V^ 5p 

Book .%% 

Copyright^ : 

copyright una 




DANIEL O'COMELL, 

THE LIBERATOR. 



HIS TIMES—POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND 
RELIGIOUS. 



sister m: f. cusack, 

ILLUSTRATED « H!STORY OF IRELAND," »UB OF ST. PATRICK," " HORNEHURST 
RECTORY, DAILY STEPS TO HEAVEN," AND NEW LIFE OF " FATHER MATHEW." 



KENMARE PUBLICATIONS. 



NEW YORK: 

D. & J. SADLIER & CO., No. 31 BARCLAY STREET. 

Montreal: Cor. Notre Dame & St. Francis Xavier Sts. 



PREFACE. 



J I) T is strange, but none tlie less true, that the majo- 
rity of Englishmen know far less about, the real 
state of Ireland than they do about the state of 
continental countries. The result of this ignor- 
ance is an intellectual disability to appreciate a 
character like O'Connell's. We believe this ignorance 
arises from one cause, and from one cause only: it is 
impossible to form a correct judgment on any subject when 
the will is biassed by prejudice, and the incorrectness of 
the judgment will be proportioned to the extent of the 
prejudice. 

It has been our one special object throughout the pre- 
sent work to quote from English authorities for proof of 
all assertions made regarding English misgovernment of 
Ireland. Irishmen do not 'need such corroborative evi- 
dence ; but as we believe that this work will circulate as 
largely as other historical works by the present writer 
amongsi Englishmen of the upper classes, we offer them, in 



proof of our assertions, such evidence as they can scarcely 
set aside. 

We are very far from wishing to add strife to strife ; but 
the elements of discord, which have stirred the waves of 
popular opinion for some eight hundred years and more, 
are slowly abating. It is true, indeed, that the gibbet and 
the triangle are no longer used to silence the cries of an 
oppressed nation, but Ireland is not spared the lash of the 
tongue, even by those whose position, as rulers of a king- 
dom which is said to be " united," should suggest a wiser, 
if not a more paternal course. 

The prejudice which prevents the calm and dispassionate 
consideration of Irish affairs and Irish character is the 
result, in some cases at least, of culpable ignorance. And 
yet, uufc .tunately for the national credit, and still more 
unfortunately for the national peace, those who are 
most ignorant are not un frequently the most confident of 
the correctness of their conclusions. As an evidence of 
this prejudice, warping the opinions of a highly intellectual 
mind, I quote the following extract from the conclusion of 
Mr Lecky's essay on O'Connell, in his work on " The 
Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland " : — 

"When to tin- great services he rendered to his country we oppose 

the sectarian ami class warfare that resulted from his policy, the 
fearful elements of discord he evoked, and which he alone could in 
some degree control, it may he questioned whether his life was a 
blessing or a curse to Ireland." 

The most cursory acquaintance with the history of Ire- 






:' 




land during- O'Connell's long and chequered career would 
surely prove the incorrectness of such a conclusion. No 
man was ever more opposed to "sectarian" warfare than 
O'Connell ; and, indeed, Mr Lecky admits this himself in 
the earlier part of his essay, where he says — 

" With the exception of his advocacy of Repeal, no part of his 
Irish policy injured him so much in the eyes of the English people 
as the opinions he hazarded about the Church ; but judged by the 
light of the events of our own day, they will be pronounced very 
reasonable and very moderate." 

How entirely true this statement is with regard to 
O'Connell's public career is well known, and the present 
work affords evidence. His moderation was the result of 
principle, since in his private correspondence he expresses 
himself as he did in public. When his religion was attacked 
he defended it with the vigour of a man who had a definite 
creed to uphold, but certainly no " sectarian warfare " 
resulted from his policy. Class warfare had existed in 
Ireland too long, and that which pre-existed certainly could 
not " result " from a future cause. That he " evoked 
discord " can only be said of him in the sense in which it 
may be said that a man provokes a quarrel when he is 
obliged to fight for his rights. It would be quite as correct 
to assert that Tell evoked discord in Switzerland when he 
roused up the Switzers to resist a tyrannical oppressor. 

Mr Lecky concludes by doubting whether O'Connell's 
life was a blessing or a curse to Ireland, and yet we think 




PREFACE. 

Mr Lecky would scarcely deny that O'Connell obtained 
emancipation for Ireland, and that emancipation was an act 
of justice. It is thus that prejudice leads Englishmen of 
the highest intellectual calibre to write, to think, and to 
speak of Ireland. 

There are two evils caused and fostered by this preju- 
dice. Conclusions are drawn on false premises, and, of 
necessity, acts follow which are more than injudicious. 
The Irish are admitted to be an intelligent race, even 
by their worst enemies ; they cannot fail to see the in- 
justice which is done to them day after day by educated 
Englishmen ; and they cannot fail to feel, and to feel 
keenly, that their misfortunes, to use a mild expression, 
which are not their own fault, are made a subject of ridi- 
cule by those whose first object, whose first duty, should 
have been to alleviate them. 

In the limits of a preface it is impossible to do more than 
to indicate subjects for consideration in connection with 
the work to which the preface is prefixed. We can, there- 
fore, only give Mr Lecky's incorrect estimate of O'CounelPs 
character as a sample of the opinion of educated English- 
men. Having done so, we descend a little lower in the 
intellectual scale, and emote Mr Lowe's recent observations 
on Irish fisheries, as an example, and a most painful one, 
of the flippancy with which Irish grievances are treated, 
not only by some educated Englishmen, but by men who, 
in virtue of their office, should be anxious to promote 



m 



PREFACE. 



kindly feelings between Great Britain and Ireland, even 
should they not be bound by their position as members of 
Government to do acts of justice. 

One of the great outcries of the day is, that politics and 
religion should be treated as separate questions. We shall 
have a few words to say on this subject presently; but we 
presume no Christian man will deny the duty of practis- 
ing Christian charity in public life, or will deny that the 
circumstances of our birth were not under our own control. 
Mr Lowe might have been born a poor Claddagh fisher- 
man ; instead of holding the reins of government and 
receiving the freedom of boroughs, he might have been 
toiling along the wild Atlantic coast for a bare subsistence 
for wife and child. He might have been the victim of a 
God-sent famine, which left hearth and home utterly deso- 
late ; he might have lost his little all in that year of misery 
and anguish, which is perhaps the only Irish calamity 
which no man has ever dared to charge on the Irish them- 
selves. He might have been unwilling to beg ; he might 
have had an honest pride, which kept him from the work- 
house ; he might have loved his home, wretched as it was, 
and his sea-girt island, poor as she is, too well to emigrate 
to the great Irish empire in the West, where an honest 
clay's wage can be had for an honest day's labour. In his 
trouble he might have gone to his parish priest — the poor 
man's only friend — and prayed him, for God's great love, to 
help him to the means of getting an honest living, how- 



7V& 




ever humble. The priest would have replied, " I cannot help 
you ; the gentlemen who govern the country will not help 
you. The troubles of poor fellows like yourself used to be 
called sentimental grievances, there is another name for 
them now — they are called 'amusing grievances.' The 
Scotch fisheries are well protected by English gun-boats, 
and well assisted by the English Government; but you are 
only a poor Irish fisherman. You have at least a choice : 
emigrate, if you can get the money; if you cannot, go to 
the workhouse." 

The Claddagh fisherman would have asked the reason of 
this strange inhumanity ; and it would not have added to 
his affection for English government to be told that the 
gentleman who found Irish misery so amusing admitted 
that he did not exactly understand what had caused it; 
that he believed the bad harvests had ruined the Irish 
iisheries; though, indeed, he did not think that could have 
been the reason ; that, in fact, he knew very little about it, 
though it certainly was his business to know ; and that all 
he seemed quite sure of was, that it was " amusing." 

The Claddagh fisherman, some few weeks after, might 
have seen — for Irishmen are all great readers — an old 
newspaper, in which he would have found the following 
extract, taken from a speech made by a Cabinet Minister 
at Glasgow, when he received the freedom of the city; 
a cursory perusal of it would at once explain the priest's 
mean ins 




SUi--*^xgyi 



PREFACE. 



[4 



" I will now enter on my last topic. I have made it last, because 
it is a little more amusing than those that preceded it. It is that 
Ireland has another grievance. (Laughter.) That grievance is this 
— the fisheries of Ireland have very much declined. I cannot say 
exactly why, but it is perhaps the reason given in a committee of 
the House of Commons, that they had given up the fisheries because 
they were so much discouraged by bad harvests. (Great laughter.) 
I don't think that could have been the reason, but, whatever is the 
reason, they come and ask me to lend them money on personal 
security — (renewed laughter) — the security of the fishermen and 
that of the priests, to lend money for nets and boats to resume 
these fisheries. Well, I said to them I was not in the habit of 
lending money in that way, and so the matter came to an end, and 
they assured' me that if they had home rule it would be done at 
once. (Applause.)" 

He would have observed that the gentleman concluded 
his speech with this quotation : — 

" Only the actions of the just 
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." 

And it might have occurred to him that a quotation from 
an older writer than Shakespeare would have suited his 
side of the question better. Has it not been written — 

" The just showeth mercy, and shall give." 



This habit of meeting Irish complaiuts with contempt, 
was reprobated again and again by O'Connell, and yet it 
still continues. Even if the Irishmen was still an 
" enemy," it would be unmanly to ridicule his misfortunes, 
when those misfortunes are, at least to a considerable 



PREFA CE. 




degree, the fault of his rulers. Such ridicule reflects most 
on him who uses it. 

It is indeed scarcely possible to take up any work, 
whether of fact or of fiction, in which Ireland is mentioned, 
without finding this spirit of ridicule ; and sometimes its 
bitterness is more than a joke. At the present time an 
autobiography is dragging out its slow length in the pages 
of Fraser's Magazine, the sole object of which appears to 
be to throw contempt on Ireland and the Irish ; and the 
suggestion is made for the hundredth time, to try de- 
population, and rather to " populate the land with Chinese 
and reaping-machines, with monkeys, or any other animal 
but the Celt." The plan of populating Ireland with beasts 
has been partly tried, and does not seem to have given as 
much satisfaction to the proposers as they expected. How 
a country could be populated with " reaping-machines," 
is an enigma we do not pretend to solve. The plan of 
extermination was tried on a very large scale, and with 
very great success, in the year of grace 1(154; but the 
results were contrary to expectation. A work has been 
written by an Irish gentleman, in which he gives statistics 
of the grand transplantation scheme which was then tried. 
The accounts are taken fr* m no doubtful source, they are 
compiled from State-papers. But the result was, that when 
English soldiers were transplanted to Ireland, they were 
not at all more disposed to submit quietly to injustice, 
than the " Irish enemy " whom they had displaced. 




A plantation of Chinese and reaping-machines would 
probably prove a failure a' so. 

But there is a yet deeper depth to which some English- 
men descend when they write or speak of Ireland. The 
pages of Preiser's Magazine are defiled by the suggestion 
to " abolish juries, burn the Habeas Corpus, and erect a 
factory in the Lower Castle Yard for spinning halters and 
cat-o'-uine-tails." The suggestion may be intended as a 
joke ; we suspect it is so couched to hide an earnestness 
of which the writer has the grace, as yet, to be a little 
ashamed. But if gentlemen write such jokes, they must 
recollect that those to whom they would not give that- name 
will write such things in earnest, and probably support 
their degradation of our common humanity by quoting 
higher authority. It is not long since a letter went 
the round of the provincial papers in England and 
Scotland, in which it was suggested, not that a cat-'o'- 
nine-tails should be made, but that it should be used 
wherever an outrage was committed in Ireland, the parish 
priest to be the victim, because he was supposed to lie 
cognisant of the offender through the confessional, and 
unwilling to give him up to justice. Are we returning to 
the dark ages? The suggestion of deeds of blood and 
brutality is the first step towards their accomplishment 
when opportunity offers. 

But there is yet another class in England who do 
not suggest such measures for the pacification of Ireland 




xvi P HE FACE. 

either in joke of in fact, but who seem, nevertheless, to 
consider that good advice is the one thing which Ireland 
requires. And this advice sometimes emanates precisely 
from those very persons who, for various reasons, are the 
very last individuals who should offer it. 

We take the opinions expressed by a recent article in the 
Contemporary Review as a sample. It may he said that 
opinions expressed in reviews, magazines, and newspapers 
are but the expression of an individual mind; but this is 
very far from being the case. Those who write are persons 
who, either from circumstances or capability, express the 
opinions which others entertain. The greater number of 
people, both educated and uneducated, confine their read- 
ing to such books or serials as express their own senti- 
ments on religion or politics. Publishers and editors cater 
for the taste of their public. No doubt in many instances 
opinion is influenced by writers, but it is rarely formed by 
them. 

It might be supposed that Irish gentlemen were capable 
of taking care of their educational interests, and that if 
they required advice, they would scarcely seek it from a 
gentleman, however accomplished, who has changed his 
religion more than once. But as the advice has been 
given, we may consider it briefly as an expression of Eng- 
lish opinion on an important subject. 

From the day on which O'Conuell obtained freedom of 
education for Irish gentlemen to the present hour, a certain 



party, and a large party, of English gentlemen have tried 
to fetter that freedom as far as it was possible for them to 
do so. In 0' Council's private correspondence with Dr 
Macflale, he reiterates his opinion that the education of 
Irish gentlemen should be confided to the clergy of their 
Church. If Irish gentlemen wish for such education, is it 
not a grave interference with the liberty of the subject to 
forbid it to them. 

In Mr Capes' article also, it 'may be remarked, in 
passing, that, while it is entirely free from the sarcastic 
spirit which disgraces so many English comments on Irish 
affairs, there is nevertheless a de haut en has tone — a 
quiet conscious superiority. It is taken for granted that 
the Irish gentleman belongs to an inferior race, and that 
" we," the people of England, are free to deny or grant, 
as in our wisdom we think fit, with but scant reference 
to the wishes of the inferior being. 

The Irish gentlemen is treated throughout as a person 
who should submit with thankfulness to the regulations 
made by the superior wisdom of his English master. The 
Irish peasant is treated as part knave and part fool, and 
as altogether incapable of the exercise of even ordinary 
reason. 

Of the hundreds who have read Mr Capes' article in the 
Contemporary Review, few indeed will have read his long 
and scholarly Preface to the " Life of St Frances of Rome," 
published in the year 1855. In the Preface he wrote thus 



of the Catholic clergy, at the conclusion of an exhaustive 
defence of miracles : — 

" Whether the Catholic religion is true or false, it is beyond the 
limits of credibility that its ruling principle can be one of inten- 
tional deception. . . . The Catholic system must have fallen to 
pieces a hundred times over, if its chief ruler and his subordinates 
were mere tricksters, playing upon the credulity of a fanatical and 
besotted world." 

On the subject of miracles he argues forcibly; first, 
against the Protestant opinion that Catholics are fools, and 
then, against the -Protestant opinion that Catholics are all 
knaves. " If," he says, " we are sincere in our faith, it is 
impossible to suppose us willing to be imposed on." "Writ- 
ing of the lives of Saints, he says : — 

" Thus, too, I am myself engaged in a similar work, either laugh- 
ing in my sleeve at the credu ity on which I practise, or submitting 
from sheer intellectual incompetence to be the tool of some wily 
Jesuit, who enjoins the unhallowed task." 

AVe leave Mr Capes to select either horn of the dilemma. 
Perhaps) he may appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober; 
but under any circumstances he should refrain, in common 
consistency, from offering his advice to Irish gentlemen. 

When English gentlemen have quite decided what reli- 
gious belief they really consider true — when they have 
decided whether they will believe in one creed, in three 
creeds, or in none — then, but not until then, should they 
offer any suggestion, or interfere with Irish gentlemen in 
the choice of a religion, or of educational guides. 




The struggle is a hopeless one. It will be better to 
abaudon it, and to have peace. Irishmen only ask 
for justice. They do not want more ; they will not be 
satisfied with less. All through his long and stormy life 
O'Connell was breasting the waves of English injustice. 
The truth may be evaded, it may be denied ; but it is still 
truth. Day after day, week after week, year after year, 
he asked only for justice. It was granted, at least iu a 
measure ; yet, for all that, much more remains to be 
granted. If Englishmen would take pains to study Irish 
history, if they would make themselves acquainted with a 
life like O'Connell's, if they would calmly consider why 
he agitated, and for what he agitated, the future both of 
England and Ireland would be happier. 

But, in order to effect this desirable end, two things are 
necessary : first, that the student should divest himself, as 
far as possible, of insular prejudice ; and, secondly, that he 
should make himself acquainted with the facts of Irish 
history, not from the narratives of those who have dis- 
torted it to suit their own ends, but by weighing the state- 
ments of the oppressed as well as those of the oppressor. 

This view of the subject was ably treated in the North 
British Review for October 1869. It is well remarked 
that — 

" Those who are not resolved to be misled by a fragmentary 
literature, should diverge from the beaten path to seek its comple- 
ment, so that whatever judgment they may form at last may be 
formed after they have heard both sides." 



PREFACE. 



The habit of forming conclusions from the evidence of 
one party only, above all when that party is the one 
complained of, is neither wire or philosophical. It has 
done more to deepen and widen the gulf of bitterness 
between England and Ireland, than all the suspensions of 
the Habeas Corpus^ or all the promulgations of Insurrec- 
tion Acts. 

The Irish naturally suppose that educated Englishmen 
have been at some pains to understand their real condi- 
tion, and when they find the facts of that state denied or 
ridiculed, they can only conclude that the denial or the 
ridicule has been the result of bitter prejudice, and an 
irradicable hatred. The lower class of Irish do not know, 
they would, perhaps, scarcely believe, that so many English 
gentlemen are so ignorant of the country to which they 
give so much good advice. 

We doubt if even English premiers take pains to know 
the condition of Ireland as it is. Mr Gladstone may read 
the Times for information ; but the Times will not tell of 
landlord oppression or tenant wrong, unless some flagrant 
case comes before the public, which is forgotten almost 
as soon as it is read. He may read the Telegraph for 
sympathy; but a ministerial organ is not likely to trouble 
the ministerial conscience with reproof. He may read 
the Standard to learn Conservative opinion ; he will find 
his Irish policy roughly handled, but he will know well 
that this is done chiefly from political motives. 






m 









w 






PREFACE. xxi 

What statesman ever troubles himself to read the Free- 
man's Journal, or the Telegraph, or the Irishman, or the 
Cork Examiner or Herald, or the Northern Star, or the 
people's papers in Deny and Galway and Waterford and 
Clonmel ? And descending lower in the social scale, the 
ignorance increases ; the mass of middle class Englishmen 
know nothing of the state of Ireland, except through the 
grossest misrepresentation. "What wonder, then, that the 
countries are '"united" only in name, and that the sever- 
ance of this union is demanded by those who are hopeless 
of being understood! 

We can here but draw attention to this subject, 
earnestly hoping that our efforts may not be in vain. 
There are thousands of honest, earnest, true-hearted 
English gentlemen, tradesmen, and mechanics, who would 
be as indignant as the Irish themselves if they could really 
understand the causes of Irish poverty, and consequently 
of Irish discontent. We have not space here to enter 
into details on this subject; but, as we have throughout 
this work given English opinion on Irish affairs, well 
knowing that Irish opinion would not be credited by 
some of our readers, we give briefly now some English 
statements on the causes of Irish discontent. 

The Irish are taunted and reproached, I must say 
cruelly, with their poverty ; yet, until the passing of the 
recent Laud Bill, they were not allowed even a chance of 
bettering their condition. They were to make bricks, they 







were cried out against as idle, yet never a straw were they 
allowed; nay, if they even attempted to find straw it was 
taken from them. 

Enough of Irish history is known in England to prove 
that the unhappy Irish peasant was not allowed to till the 
soil for himself, or even to practise any trade until the 
close of the last century. Every industrial resource was 
sternly forbidden ; how then could capital accumulate in 
the country? Sir John Davis said the state of the bond 
slave was better than the state of the Irish peasant, " for 
the bond slave was fed by his lord, but here the lord was 
fed by his bond slave." 

But it may be said, all this has passed away. We must 
nut lay thifc flattering unction to our souls — no mistake 
could be more fatal — and yet no mistake is more frequent. 
English gentlemen, with the best intentions, will express 
themselves utterly disgusted with Ireland, and will fling 
aside all thought of doing her justice, because, as they say, 
they have clone so much, and she still complains. They 
have disestablished the Protestant Church in Ireland, but 
they cannot pardon us for saying that this disestablish- 
ment has not bettered the condition of the poor or middle 
classes one iota. Irishmen, too, cannot but know that 
that justice was done rather as a peace-offering at the 
shrine of public opinion than as special kindness to them. 
We are far from wishing to hear of the disestablishment of 
t lie Protestant Church in England; but if it does not dis- 



T* 4 

T5u 




integrate itself from utter inability to cohere in almost 
every point of doctrine, those who note the signs of the 
times on the political horizon, are freely predicting its 
speedy dissolution by Act of Parliament. 

The recent Land Bill has done a certain, or, perhaps it 
would be more correct to say, an uncertain amount of good 
in Ireland. But how much more needs to be done, is best 
known to those who have personal acquaintance with the 
miserable state of the Irish peasantry. There are ab- 
sentee landlords, who own thousands of acres of Irish land, 
whose one sole object seems to be to get the most rent 
they can from their half-starving tenantry. They may 
speak well, they may write well, they may enter cordially 
into every philanthropic scheme, except such as touch their 
own interests. Yet these men are pointed out as model 
landlords, because they visit their estates once, perhaps, in 
two or three years, for two or three weeks, because, at the 
order of an agent, whom the unhappy- tenant dare not 
disobey, costly rejoicings are made for the visit ; but the 
landlord does not hear, and the agent does not care for, 
the ''curses, not loud but deep," which precede and accom- 
pany the demonstration. 

Even if no other evil were done thereby, the with- 
drawal of thousands a year from the country, which is 
spent in a distant land, is in itself a most grievous in- 
justice. It is a natural law, that if you take crops from 
land you must pay nature back with interest. This 



natural law holds good in political economy as much as in 
physical science. Men may not defy the divinely-im- 
posed conditions of nature, or if they do, they know the 
penalty ; but they do defy it when the penalty does not 
fall upon themselves. Again, the tiller of the land is the 
only trader who does not receive consideration in case of 
loss or failure. In some rare instances — and how rare they 
are Irish tenants best can tell — some consideration is 
made for bad weather and cattle plague, or other pro- 
vidential calamities; but, for the most part, there is no 
such consideration. The rent is demanded equally, be the 
crop more or less, and the unhappy tiller of the soil, who 
has already lived on almost famine fare, must only live on 
less. 

No country can prosper unless those who till the soil 
are permitted a sufficient remuneration for their labour, 
to enable them, in their turn, to encourage manufacturers. 
Chinese and reaping-machines might support absentee 
landlords in affluence, but they could not raise any country 
in the social scale. 

If English gentlemen can forget their manhood, and 
degrade their nationality, by attempting anything like a 
wholesale depopulation of Ireland, they would hear, not 
" Whisper in your ear, John Bull," but a thunder of in- 
dignation, which would soon break out into thunder of 
another kind. It is too late in the nineteenth century for 
such folly ; aud as the folly is impractical, it would be 



@ 



1 






Letter for the self-respect of those who utter it if they 
would keep silence for the future. 

Taunts like" Mr Lowe's, and insults such as have dis- 
graced the pages of more than oue English magazine, do 
more to widen the breach between England and Ireland, 
do more to increase expressions of Irish discontent, do more 
to make rebels, than the speeches of the wildest Fenian, or 
the leaders of the Irishman or Nation. 

To honest Englishmen who wish to know the true state 
of Ireland, we say, Read the Irish local papers. You 
will find that even at the present day the most cruel and 
capricious evictions are taking place: and yon will find 
that whole tracts of land are reclaimed by honest and 
industrious peasants, only to have their rents raised as a 
reward for their labour. You will find, as the able writer 
of the article on the Literature of the Land Question in 
Ireland has said, " Opinions may vary as to points of policy 
suggested by the popular writers, and as to the gravity and 
bearing of particular statemeuts ; but it is clear that a 
thorough understanding of the Irish question cannot be 
obtained without a knowledge of the existence of this 
literature, and a careful study of it." In this article also 
the writer fully exposes the dealings of two agents, both 
magistrates. 

If Irish evidence will be accepted, we would refer to the 
statements of the " Meath Tenant Defence Association," as 
published in the Drogheda Argus, and signed by the Very 



Rev. John Nicolls, P.P.Y.G., and his curate, the Rev. P. 
Kenny, CO., published in the month of February 1872. 

By law, the Irish are free to choose and practise their 
own religion, yet there is an increasing attempt, on the 
part of English writers at least, to deprive them of that 
liberty. If it were possible to find any individual who 
could look at the whole question, and consider both sides, 
his judgment would surely be that, until English gentle- 
men claimed personal or Divine infallibility of belief, they 
should not interfere with the belief of others. If the 
Catholic is aggressive in his religion, he is at least con- 
sistent. He believes in the Divine origin of his Church, 
and therefore he obeys her commands, and does his best 
to induce those who are without the fold to enter into it. 
The Divine origin of the Catholic Church may be denied; 
but granted a man believes in it, there is no inconsistency, 
logical or otherwise, in his acting on his belief. With the 
Protestant, whether he protests for a State Church or no 
Church, for three creeds or for none, the case is entirely 
different. Believing that all men are left to choose their 
religion, and not being able to deny that such choice leads 
to the selection of the most opposite forms of belief, he 
should, in common consistency, leave the Catholic to follow 
the dictates of his conscience, without even so much as 
verbal molestation. 

The strife between the world and the Church has never 
raged so fiercely as at the present day. It is the practice 



to speak as if politics and religion were two separate sub- 
jects, which should he kept carefully apart; and yet the 
two subjects alwaj-s have been, and always will be, insepa- 
rably united while time shall last. Where there is simple 
misapprehension on the subject, it arises from not clearly 
understanding what politics really are. Where there is a 
particular bias, as in the case of those who are constantly 
declaiming against the interference of priests in politics, 
the case is different. 

Politics are taken simply to mean the rivalries of certain 
opposite parties for power. Even taking this lowest view, 
religion must enter into the question. In England we find 
Mr Gladstone taunted again and again with subservience 
to the Irish hierarchy on the Education question, for the 
purpose of keeping himself in power. The entire politics 
of the day in Germany turn on religious questions, 
and Bismarck, after expelling the Jesuits, is occupying 
himself with an attempt to get rid of the Catholic hierarchy. 
" We may wonder at the authority the Pope exercises, and 
we may regret it ; but there it is, a patent and incontest- 
able fact." 1 So patent and incontestable is this fact, 
indeed, that one might have supposed the world would 
have learned to submit quietly to it, if we did not know 
that an eternal enmity between the world and the Church 
has been predicted by the Eternal Truth. 



1 Standard, Oct. 1, 1872. 




If we take the word " politics " iu the largest sense, we 
shall see at once that we cannot separate politics from 
religion. Politics are part of the ethics of government ; 
to govern implies not merely to make war or peace, but to 
rule and regulate all the internal constitution of a king- 
dom. How can such ruling be separated from religion? 
Statesmen must either govern the state under some kind 
of submission to a Supreme Power, or they must govern 
it as infidels. Human beings, considered in the aggregate, 
are the subject-matter of political science; when amongst, 
say, four millions of human beings, there are two or 
three different forms of religious belief, and when this 
religious belief is of a practical character, the politician 
caunot govern without special reference to it. 

If this subject were more carefully considered, more than 
half the matter which has appeared in print on the subject 
of the interference of the Catholic clergy in politics, would 
be treated as simply useless. If Englishmen do not know, 
they ought to know, that Catholics cannot separate politics 
f, om religion. There is a moral aspect iu every political 
question; the Catholic receives his moral teaching from 
his Church ; it is then absurd to ask him to consider such 
questions apart from such teaching ; it is childish to 
handy such names as " priest-ridden " and " Ultra- 
montane." 

" Protestants choose to call the Irish peasant priest-ridden, 
simply because they cannot understand the principle upon 




PRE FA CE. 



which the Irish peasant acts. Because he is consistent ; 
because, believing a certain faith, he acts on his belief, he 
is made an object of scorn, or at best, is looked upon as an 
incomprehensible being. So it is with those of the higher 
classes who are spoken of as being Ultramontane : they 
certainly do believe in the authority of the successor of Peter 
" over the mountains ; " it is a fact, there is no use in 
quarrelling with it; nor is there any wisdom in alleging 
any reason for it except the true one. 

It is useless to devote pages of a serial to combative 
articles on the Irish Roman Catholic laity, to talk of their 
being nuder the rule of an " arrogant and domineering 
priesthood" in' one breath, and, in the next, to say that 
they " detest and dread " the priest, because he " flatters 
the prejudice of the peasantry." 2 All such writing is 
simply the result of ignorance. 

There are indeed, unhappily, some few Irish Catholics 
who have lost the freshness of their faith, who are half 
ashamed of the religion which they are still afraid to 
forsake. Perhaps fifty such gentlemen might be found in 
all Ireland — we doubt if there are ten — but they generally 
come prominently forward; they are complimented largely 
on their liberality and their spirit by their Protestant 
friends ; and they are gratified by the compliment. They 
may proclaim their own opinions, but they have no right 



2 " The Irish Roman Catholic Laity." — Eraser's Mayazine for October. 



r.'J 



to speak for others, or to give a false impression of their 
religion. 

The subject of Education is not unlikely to be a minis- 
terial crisis in the next session. If the Catholic nobility 
and gentry, the barristers and magistrates, of Ireland, 
were as anxious to have their children educated by Pro- 
testants as some persons suppose, they have every facility 
for obtaining such education for them. It is, therefore, 
idle to taunt them with moral cowardice because they 
follow their ecclesiastical superiors in obedience to their 
conscience ; rather should the taunt be levelled against 
those who, while still claiming the name of Catholic, have 
ceased to be Catholics in unity or in practice. It is 
worse than an insult to assert that the Catholic gentlemen 
of Ireland admire the "manly courage" and "fervid elo- 
quence " of Mr Justice Keogh at Galway, and that they 
agree with him in denouncing " the tyranny of the bishops, 
the violence, dishonesty, and equivocation of the priests." 
We have yet to learn that it is " manly " to attack those 
who could not defend themselves, or that rant is " fervid 
eloquence." It might be supposed that tho.-e who write 
for the public would take at least some little pains to 
make themselves acquainted with public opinion, would be 
at some pains to make themselves acquainted with the 
previous history of those whom they commend, and with 
the sentiments of those whose true opinions they profess 
to know by some mysterious species of intuition. 






With regard to Mr Justice Keogh, he had undoubtedly a 
right to change his mind both on political and religious 
questions, but his English admirers have no ground for 
honouring him as a consistent defamer of the priesthood 
or eulogist of a certain class of landlords. The truth is, 
that the great majority of English writers are entirely 
ignorant of what is well known to every man, woman, and 
child in Ireland ; or possibly, in some cases, they find it 
convenient to ignore what it does not suit their purpose to 
remember. We would ask the thousands of honest-hearted 
Englishmen who have taken the judicial harangue of Mr 
Justice Keogh for gospel to read a history of his career, 
published and circulated from one end of Ireland to the 
other. 

In the year 1851 this gentleman published a pamphlet, 
in which he revised a speech of his own, made at the 
Athlone Banquet, and from this speech, as published by 
himself, we give the following extract : — 

" I see here the venerated prelates of my Church — first among 
them, 'the observed of all observers,' the illustrious Archbishop of 
Tuam, who, like that lofty tower which rises upon the banks of the 
yellow Tiber, the pride and protection of the city, is at once the 
glory and the guardian, the decus et iutamen of the Catholic religion, 
joining with the tried and faithful representatives of the people, 
who, after each in his own locality receiving the approbation of his 
constituents, have done me the great honour of attending this 
banquet, to testify that I too was one, even though the humblest 
of that number, who, in a time of great trial, were found true to 
their country, their honour, and their God." 



W\ 

m 




m 



PREFA CE. 

In the same speech he denounced the landlords of Ireland 
as a "heartless aristocracy," as "the most heartless, the 
most thriftless, the most indefensible landocracy on the 
face of the earth," and as men who have made Ireland " a 
lowling wilderness." 

It is conveniently forgotten, too, that Mr Justice Keogh 
made a famous declaration — in which he invoked the name of 
God in the most solemn manner again and again — to con- 
vince the Irish people of his sincerity to the national cause, 
a sincerity of which some keen-sighted gentlemen had their 
doubts. It is forgotten also, that on the 2d of April 1853, 
he spoke of the Catholic bishops and clergy as his "revered 
friends." 

But there is a yet more startling phase in the career 
of this gentleman whom so many English writers are de- 
limited to honour. If they praise his Galway utterances 
as "manly" and " fervid," they must surely give the same 
praise to his speech at Athlone, where, according to the 
statement of the Lord-Lieutenant of the day, he distinctly 
recommended assassination. The subject was brought 
before the House of Lords on the 10th of June 1853, by 
Lord Westmeath. He said : — 

"Mr Keogh, standing on the right hand of that candidate (Cap- 
tain Magan), spoke to the audience, the mob, in broad day, in the 
streets, the words which he should presently read for their lordships 
— words which had been heard by three magistrates of the county, 
and which they were ready to corroborate on oath. At a place 
called Moate, from Magan's committee-room, Mr Keogh said : — 



> 



■ft 



':£■ 



-XL 



1 Boys, the days are now long and the nights are short. In autumn 
the flags will be getting shorter and the nights longer. In winter (or 
Kim mber) the nights will be very long, and then let every one remem- 
ber who voted for Sir R. Levinge.' It was rumoured that vacancies 
•were about to occur on the Irish Bench, and that Mr Keogh was not 
unlikely to succeed to one. Though it might be alleged that Mr 
Keogh was not Solicitor-General when he made the speech to which 
he (the Marquis of Westmeath) referred, he wished to know whetlier 
any person who would attempt to advance any purpose, whether 
political or social, by such means, ivas Jit to be placed on the Irish 
Bencltl" 

Lord Derby said : — 

"The noble Earl (Aberdeen) says he knows nothing about that 
election speech, and, of course, I am bound to believe him ; but it 
appears to me to show a great ignorance — I do not mean the word 
offensively— but, at any rate, a great absence of knowledge in the 
noble Earl not to have known that, at the time when Mr Keogh was 
made Solicitor-General, he was accused of having made that speech. 
The county of Westmeath is one in which Mr Keogh lias not a foot 
of land. He was acting there as a leader or partisan of what is 
called the Liberal interest in Ireland— liberal enough in sone 
respects, but illiberal in others— and in that capacity, having been a 
member of the former 'parliament and a candidate for a seat in the 
next, and intending to make his support valuable to the Govern- 
ment, he is reported to have warned the people that the nights were 
then short and the days long, that the time wascoming when the nights 
would be longand. thedays short, and that that would be the time at wh ich 
any person who might vote for .Sir !!■ Levinge for Westmeath ouyht 
to look out for what might follow. And, if I am not mueh mistaken, 
there was a recommendation that the people of that county should 
collect together and go into the town of Athlone, for which lie was 
himself a candidate, armed with shillelaghs, and take care to use 
them when they got there. This may have been totally incorrect ; 
but if this, or anything like it, was said by Mr Keogh so openly and 



'?, 



publicly tliat it was a matter of general notoriety, / say it dis- 
qualified that honourable and learned gentleman, from being put into 
any situation in any government in which, in the slightest degree, he 
might be called on to support, or nominally to support, the adminis- 
tration of the law." 

Mr Keogli denied the charge, but the Protestant rector 
of Moate, the Rev. Mr Hopkins, wrote to Lord Westmeath 
to maintain that he had used the words, and his testimony 
was supported by the solemn assurance of several magis- 
trates, and of two members of the Society of Friends. How 
Mr Justice Keogh would have dealt with such testimony — 
had it been offered in the Gal way trial, we all know; with 
what withering scorn, with what scathing denunciation, 
with what " fervid eloquence," would he not have borne 
clown upon the unhappy priest who might have allowed 
such words to escape his lips? His fine sense of justice 
would have been horrified, his power of denunciation would 
have been exhausted; with that exceptional refinement and 
delicacy which characterises his judicial utterances, he 
would have imitated the tone and the manner of clerk or 
laic who had dared to commit such an outrage on the 
honoured aristocracy of the land. He would have forgotten 
in his just indignation to criticise the grammar of his 
victim, to give historical lectures, or to comment on his 
rhetoric. His grand thirst for justice would have con- 
trolled all the petty pride which might tempt him to the little 
vanity of a display of superior education and knowledge ; 
the victim would have been held up to the scorn of the 



PREFACE. 



J 



United Kingdom, would have been indicted without a 
day's delay for seditious utterances. 

Mr Keogh's apology for his observations at Moate were 
conveyed in the form of a letter to the Duke of Newcastle, 
in which he said— 

" It did not occupy five minutes, and I was not reported so as to 
enable me to refer to it. I have no recollection whatever of using 
any language even similar to that attributed to me ; but my memory 
may fail me as to the precise words used in the heat and excitement 
of election occurrences, and I trust, therefore, rather to the evidence 
of friends who were present, and the inherent improbability of my 
ezpressiug sentiments which 1 never entertained rather than to my 
own recollection." 

The Dublin Evening Mail, 2d June 1853, an Orange organ, 
observed that " the seditious speech was no longer denied, 
but it was only a little one." Lord Eglinton read for the 
House a letter from Arthur Brown, Esq., J. P., in which he 
said — 

" I wish (as the magistrate who took the declaration of James 
Burke), to satisfy you that every word in that declaration is true, 
and that at least twenty gentlemen of independence and station 
(among them the rector of Moate, the Rev. Mr Hopkins), are ready 
and willing to support the truth of that deposition by their evidence 
on oath. The gentlemen in question were present on the occasion. 
heard the words so delivered, and there can be no more doubt of 
their utterance than of any other truth which cannot be disputed." 

We do not desire to pursue the unwelcome theme' 
further. Our one object is gained if we can induce those 
English "entlemen who shall read this work to ask them- 



0. 'S 




selves why Irish Catholics of all classes, not only in Ire- 
land, but throughout the world, are justly indiguaut at the 
Gahvay judgment, and, what is, if possible, of far greater 
importance, why Ireland is not prosperous with English rule. 
It is frequently believed that " things have changed since 
O'Connell's time," that "the Irish are a discontented race 
whom nothing can satisfy," that " their grievances are 
sentimental." Certainly during O'Connell's long and 
noble career he obtained much justice for Ireland, certainly 
much has been done lately; but while much yet remains to 
be done, it is neither right for English honour, nor safe for 
English prosperity, to refuse all that Ireland needs in order 
to be prosperous and content. 

The Irish peasantry are not in a prosperous condition ; 
and while the Irish hear their clergy ridiculed, and their 
conduct basely maligned and misrepresented, with the full 
approbation of the great majority of English writers, there 
can scarcely be peace between the two countries. 

At a meeting of the clergy of the diocese of Galway. the 
following solemn protest was put on record : — 

" We deem it our duty to record our solemn protest, not only 
against the judgment itself, but. for the information of the public 
and the Imperial Parliament, who had no opportunity of witnessing 
the strange scene, against the gross impropriety of manner attend- 
ing its delivery, which we have no hesitation in describing as a 
desecration of the sanctuary of justice, shocking to the feelings of 
every impartial listener. We leave the public to judge of this, 
whom, from personal observation, we assure, that the delivery of 




m 



I 



:r '\* 



the judgment, which occupied nearly eight hours, was but a con- 
tinued paroxysm of rage, seemingly ungovernable — one uninter- 
rupted scene of roaring, screaming, foaming, violent striking of the 
desk with clenched fist, occasional walking backward and forward, 
with wig flung aside, mimicry of adverse witnesses, fulsome adula- 
tion of landlords and gentry, of which no printed report could give 
any idea whatever." 

So long as there shall be any distinction between the 
administration of justice in England and in Ireland, so 
long will the two countries remain disunited. So long as 
English public opinion of Ireland is governed by prejudice, 
there can be little confidence. Let Englishmen show them- 
selves ready not only to do justice, but to speak justice. 

"We cannot conclude this preface without acknowledging 
our obligations to those gentlemen who have placed valu- 
able documents, private papers, and letters at our disposal 
for the present work. To his Grace the Archbishop of 
Tuam we are especially indebted for the use of his long 
private correspondence with the Liberator, and for the 
copies of the few of his own letters to O'Connell which 
he has preserved. His Grace had intended to publish 
this correspondence himself; but, with his usual disin- 
terested generosity, he transferred it to the present writer 
on hearing that she was about to publish this work. We 
are indebted also to the Most Rev. Dr Purcell, Arch- 
bishop of Cincinnati, for some documents on the sub- 
ject of slavery, which, with some other papers, are reserved 
for another work. We owe him thanks, too, for his words 



V 



PRE FA CE. 



of encouragement and fur help, which has not limited 
itself to words. 3 

We have to thank P. J. Fitzpatrick, Esq., J. P., for the 
use of a valuable collection of old newspapers, and for 
advanced sheets of his forthcoming work, " The Life of Dr 
Lanigan," the well-known Irish ecclesiastical historian, and 
the consistent and ardent opposer of the Veto. 

To Maurice Lenihan, Esq., J. P.,- Limerick, we are obliged 
for a very valuable collection of private papers, of which 
we hope to make more use in another work, and for the 
original of tne King of Bavaria's letter to O'Connell. To 
Isaac Butt, Esq., M.P., we are indebted for the appendix 
to Chapter XV., and for his interest in our work. To Sir 
John Gray, M.P., we are obliged for the narratives of his 

3 A sample of the contradictor}- charges made against Catholics occurred 
lately in America. The Catholic 'clergy had been again and again 
taunted with indifference to literature ; nuns had been represented again 
and again as either half imbecile, or wasting their lives in useless and 
frivolous employments, unless they happen to make their work public as 
Sisters of Mercy. Vet there are few Orders in the Church in which the 
religious are not engaged actively and unceasingly in the gnat and 
noble work of education ; and even the most highly educated of these 
religious must continue to study both history and science, in order to 
impart the knowledge of both, as well as the lighter accomplishments 
which her pupils require, to fit them for their places in society. The 
charge of intellectual inactivity is about the most groundless which 
it'norance has made, and which prejudice persists in keeping up. 

Every nun who teaches the higher classes must teach history, and must 
write notes for her classes on history, if she wishes to teach it thoroughly. 
Nor can she teach logic without explaining politics ; and though the 
an^ry discussions of the politics of the day cannot be heard in the 











prison life, and to Lady Gray for assisting in procuring 
them. To P. J. 0' Carroll, Esq., we are indebted for news- 
papers relating to O'Connell's trial; and we are especially 
indebted to J. Leyne, Esq., of the Registration Office, 
Dublin, for the O'Connell pedigree at the end of the work, 
and for the notes appended thereto. 

Our special thanks are also due to Mitchell Henry, Esq., 
M.P., for a copy of his speech in the House of Commons 
on the 25th of July 1872. Each part of the judicial 
harangue is carefully examined therein, and triumphantly 
refuted. This speech is all the more remarkable, as it 
comes to us from a Protestant gentleman. Those who 
strive to persuade themselves and others that Catholic 



conventual class-room, the whole subject of politics, in their highest 
ami truest sense, must be explained. 

Even at the risk of making this note very much longer than Lu was 
intended to be when commenced, we would call attention to the discussion 
going on at present in the English school boards, where it is found that 
history cannot be taught apart from religion. Not long since Mr Arnold 
said he would not send Protestant children to a Catholic school. The 
school-board solicitor replied that the religious instruction ceased at half- 
past nine in the morning ; but Mr Arnold answered that the elements 
of religious education were sometimes taught in other forms. The reports 
of the English Poor School Committee speak expressly on the matter ; 
and Canon Oakley, in his discussions on this subject in the Catholic 
papers, states that a "distinguished Protestant Government inspector " 
says that it may be necessary hereafter to proscribe -history during the 
period of secular instruction. A little common sense, indeed, would 
show that it is almost impossible to teach any subject except pure mathe- 
matics, without giving at least a bias to the pupil's mind on religious 
questions. 



gentlemen secretly admire the denouncer of their religion, 
and the reviler of their clergy, would do- well to recollect 
that there are many Protestant gentlemen who have had 
i lie courage and justice to express their disgust for such a 
degradation of the bench in Ireland. Mr Henry, being a 
large landed proprietor, was selected for special compli- 
ments, an honour which he scorned as it deserved. But Mr 
Henry's relatives, though they had no connection whatever 
with Galway, or the Galway judgment, were selected for 
eminent; and as his brother happened to be a priest 
and a convert, the judge, to enhance his rhetoric, and we 
must suppose to pander to the class in Englaud to whom 
he knew the judgment would be acceptable, gave him the 
title of Jesuit. 

As we fear that many, to whom it would be of most ser- 
vice, may not see Mr Henry's able pamphlet, we give the 
following extracts, as an evidence of Protestant opinion on 
the subject, from an able and educated man : — 

•' Yes, Mr Speaker, I charge Judge Keogb with deliberately out- 
raging the religious feelings of a religious people; and there is no 

one passage in his harangue winch has given so much offence, and 
occasioned so much consternation, as his sneers at the efficacy of 
prayer. 

" Go among the peasantry of Ireland, and your greeting, from the 
bottom of their hearts, is ' God save you ;' visit them in their sick- 
ness and sorrow, when their crops have faded anil hard hunger 
knocks at their door, and tlf ir commentary is, ' God is good.' Do 
them a service, and the highest reward they can promise you -not 
in meaningless words, but out of the sincerity of their reli iuus 



nature — as I have heard a thousand times, is, ' We will pray for 
you ;' for this people of the West pray not with their lips only — 
they believe in prayer; they believe that they have a Friend in 
Heaven, who will at last redress their wrongs and vindicate Himself 
to them. And yet, sir, before such a people, Judge Keogh, from the 
judgment-seat, and clothed in the official ermine, retails a stale and 
ribald jest, and fathers it withal on a priest, to show that it is no 
use their praying for rain unless the wind changes. 

" It is almost incredible. When he calls a Galway priest ' this 
insane disgrace to the Roman Catholic religion,' I cannot help ask- 
ing what religion he owns himself, and whether he disgraces it or 
not, and whether he is sane?" 

We have mentioned elsewhere the obligations to the 
Rev. John O'Hanlon, C.C., for the record of O'Connell'a 

last days, which will be found at page 750, and to the 
Rev. M. Close for a verbatim copy ~>f this interesting 
document. To Mr Close I am indebted for much help in 
my literary labours, given with so prompt courtesy, which 
enhances their value. 

We may also observe, for the national credit, that we 
have found the proprietors of Webb's Library, in Dublin, 
most obliging in supplying works of reference. We can 
confidently recommend this library to students. It was 
first brought to our notice by several Catholic clergymen. 
The proprietors are, we believe, Protestauts — another evi- 
dence, were it needed, that the Catholic clergy are readers 
of a high class of literature, and that party prejudice is 
confined now, as it was in the time of O'Connell, to a class 
whom nothing will satisfy except Orange ascendancy, and 




CONTENT £. 



CHAPTER I 

FAMILY — BIETH — BOYHOOD. 1774-1790. 
Political Situation at the time of O'Connell's Birth— His Pedi- 
gree— Paul Jones— Smuggling in Kerry— English Op- 
pression-O'C'onnell's Affection for his Mother, and Pride 
of Family— Darrynane Abbey— The Clan O'Connell— 
O'CoDnell's Early Aptitude for Letters— His First School- 
master—The Crelaghs— Father O'Grady— At School in 
Cork— Education in France— Early Hatred of England— 
Reign of Terror— Louis XVIII. and the Old Irish Brigade 
—General Daniel Count O'Connell, 

CHAPTER II. 

EARLY DAYS AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 1790-1800. 

The French Revolution and the Irish Rebellion Compared— 
Louis XIV. and George III.— English Opinions on Irish 
Policy-Louis XVI— The Two Sheares-St Omers— 
O'Connell and the Priesthood— His Opinions of the French 
Revolution— Interview with Robert Owen— At Lincoln's 
Inn— Origin of Constitutionalism— Catholic Church Con- 
servative—The English and Irish Catholics Contrasted— 
Early Toryism — Hardy's Trial — Home Tooke — The 
Georges and the Stuarts— Rise of Democracy— American 
War— Benjamin Franklin— The Irish in America, 



3-58 



61-100 



CHAPTER III. 

ENTRY ON PUBLIC LIFE— POLITICAL SITUATION. 1775-1797. 

Political Troubles in England— Attack on the King— Fondness 
for Field Sports— Fever— First Visit to Dublin— English 
Policy with Ireland— Forced Attempt at Legislative Jus- 





xliv 



COX TENTS. 



tiee — Causes and Character of the Irish Rebellion — 
Grattan — Lord Charlemont — Ireland in Arms — Alarm in 
England — Wants of Ireland — Mr Fox — Repeal of Act VI. 
Geo. I. — Causes of the Ruin of Irish Independence — Eng- 




lish Bribery — Grattan's Letter, 



103-156 



CHAPTER IV. 

CAUSES OF THE IRISH REBELLION. 1790-1800. 

The Northern Whig Club— The United Irishmen Club— Catho- 
lic Address to the King — Political Commotions — Treachery 
of Pitt — Lord Fitzwilliam, the Catholic Question, aud the 
Beresfords — Maynooth Established — The Orange Society — 
Catholic Clergy — Overzeal of O'Connell — Arrests — List of 
Suspected Persons — Lord Cornwallis' Administration — 
The Cromwell Policy — State of the Peasantry — Testimony 
of Mary Leadbetter, ..... 159-194 

CHAPTER V. 

THE BAR AND POLITICS. 1798-1801. 

First Circuit— At the Bar — Jerry Keller — Bar Stories — Promise 
of Success — Clear Ideas of Fox — The Irish Parliament — 
The Union — Policy of Pitt — Bribery — The Priests — 
Concussion in Voting — Letter of Mr Luke Fox — The Bar 
and the Union — " The Anti-Union " — First Speech — Anti- 
Union Resolutions — Personal Appearance — Grattan aud. 
Pitt— Personal danger, ..... 197-254 

CHAPTER VI. 

PUBLIC SPIRIT AND POPULARITY. 1S02-1810. 

On Circuit — In Court — Bar Anecdotes — Marriage — On Guard 
— Fresh Risings and Revenges — Catholic Church. — Catho- 
lic Priests and Protestant Clergy — Maynooth — The Veto 
— Pole — Wellesley — Castlereagh — Plain Speaking — Love 
of Justice — Resolution to Petition — Effects of the Union 
— Demand for its Repeal — Speech — Petition— The Hier- 
archy — The Protestant Bishop of Meath— The Edinburgh 
Review— Cobbett— Lift into Popularity, . . 257-313 




i 



Orange Outrages ^"Religious Persecution — Intolerance in the "as 

Array — Adventures on Circuit — Another Affair of Honour 
— Professional Successes — Speech at Limerick — Happy 
Allusions — Address from Dingle and Reply — Catholics 
Entertaining Protestants at the Festive Board — The 
Government and the Catholic Association — Mr Wellesley 
Pole — Addressing the Prince of Wales — Speeches on the 
Address and Conduct of Pole — Mr Perceval — Political 
Dissension among Catholics — Right of Assembly — Arrest 
of Lord Fingal — Shelley — English Injustice — Father Dan 
— At Limerick and Cork, .... 317-353 

CHAPTER VIII. 

EXPOSURES OF PUBLIC MEASURES AND PUBLIC MEN. 1812-1813. 

English Administration of Irish Affairs— Party Rule — No- 
Popery Cry — Assassination of Mr Perceval — The Prince of 
Wales — The Witchery Resolutions — Speech — The Orange 
Faction — The Landlords and the Tenantry — Effective 
Speech — Denunciation of Orangeism — A National Debt — 
Style of Speech — At his Zenith — As a Raconteur — Anec- 
dotes of Jerry Keller and Lord Clare — Parson Hawkes- 
worth — Administration of Justice — The Dublin Evening 
Post — At Home — Letter to Landor — Trial of John Magee 
— The Prosecution and Prosecutor — The Reply, . 357-419 



CHAPTER IX. 

COURAGE AND PATRIOTISM. 1813-1819. 

The English Catholics— The Duke of Norfolk and Dr Milner 
— Castle Browne and the Jesuits — Peel and Dr Kenny — 
Public Honours — Duelling and Duellists — The Irish 
Catholic Aristocracy — D'Esterre, his Challenge and Fatal 
Duel — Agrarian Outrages— Rev. John Hamilton, his Plots 
and Tools — Affair of Honour with Peel — Peel's Gift to 
Ireland, ....... 



423-450 



xlvi 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER X. 

LOYALTY TO GOD AND THE KING. 1820-1822. 

Panegyric on Grattan — Outrage at Kilmainham — Harcourt "°e 
Lees — "Pastoral Letter" for 1821 — First Appearance of 
Shiel — Mr Plunket — Analysis of Mr Plunket's Bills — 
Spiritual Functions and Freedom of the Clergy — Pro- 
testant Bigotry — George IV. and Queen Caroline — Royal 
Visit to Ireland — Loyal Reception at Dublin — The Irish 
People — Presentation of O'Connell at Court — Irony of 
Lord Byron — Wellesley and his Irish Policy — Orange 
Orgies — The Beefsteak Club interfered with, and its 
Revenge — Wellesley and the Orangemen — A Catholic 
Triumph, . . . % . . . 453-182 

CHAPTER XL 

CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION — ITS FORMATION AND DEFENCE. 

1822-1827. 

Flood and Connar — Cross-examination of Flood — Plunket and 
Hart — Formation of Catholic Association — Priests and 
People brought into Action— First Meeting — The Inexor- 
able Purcell — The Penny-a-nionth Scheme for Liberating 
Ireland — Grand Aggregate Meeting — The Conversion 
Mania — The Pope and Maguire Controversy — Abortive 
Prosecution of O'Connell— The Duke of York's " So-heip- 
me-God " Speech — The King's Speech and the Association 
— Lords Liverpool and Brougham — O'Connell in London 
— Lords Palmerston and Eldon — The Ladies— O'Connell's 
Popularity— Aims of the Association — Another Challenge 
—Shiel— Canning, ...... 485-514 



< v ^ 



CHAPTER XII. 

O'CONNELL AND THE CATHOLTC HIERARCHY. 1827-1835. 

Commencement of Correspondence with Dr MacHale — Priestly 
Co-operation — A New Era — Sketch of Dr MacHale's Life 
— Sketch of Dr Doyle's Life — His " Vindication of Catho- 



Mb 



lies "— Dr Doyle and the Lords' Committee — Honest Jack PA °« 

Lawless — Henry Grattan — Mr O'Gorman Mahon — Scene 

in the "House" — Steele — Mr Barrett — Mr Ray, . .517-534 

CHAPTER XIII. 

king dan. 1825-1829. 

England's Answer to Ireland's Cry for Justice — Decline since 
the Days of Henry VIII. — Ireland a Necessity for Eng- 
land — A Catholic Triumph — Address to the Catholics of 
Clare — Excitement and Agitation — Consternation in Eng- 
land — Monster Meeting at Ennis — Scene at the Hustings, 
the Sheriff and O'Gorman Mahon— The Voting Day — Mr 
Vandaleur and his Tenants — Return of O'Connell — Speech 
of Shiel — The Chairing — Excitement in England — The 
Bishops and Priests — Official Irritation— King Dau — The 
Leicester Declaration— Letter of Wellington — The Eman- 
cipation Bill Passed — O'Connell's Right to a Seat Disputed 
— At the Bar of the House — Re-Election — Smith O'Brien 
— Enthusiasm, ...... 537-578 

CHAPTER XIV. 

PARLIAMENTARY LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE. 1829-1839. 

The Waterford Election— Montalembert and O'Connell — Let- 
ters to the People of Ireland — Lord Leveson Gower — Pal- 
merston and Wellington — History and Politics — The 
Emancipation Act not Followed by the Millennium — 
Exasperation of the Orangemen and Distress among the 
Peasantry — Temporary Arrest of O'Connell — Letter to Dr 
MacHale — Anti-Tithe Riots— In Parliament — Lord Al- 
thorpe and Shiel — O'Connell's Motion for Repeal — 
Cathedrals — Letter — Melbourne and O'Connell — Disraeli 
and the O'Connells — Letter — Lyndhurst's Attack on the 
Irish — Banquets — Speech of Dr Machale — Letter — O'Con- 
nell undertakes a Retreat — Reception at the Abbey — 
Letters — Entertained in London — Defies the House — 
Letters, 581-666 






CHAPTER XV. 

AGITATION FOR REPEAL. 1839-1843. 

The Repeal Movement Projected — Correspondence, explaining 
Ideas and Plans, with Dr MacHale — Repeal Association 
Formed — Discouraging Start — Repeal Meetings in the 
South and North — General Election, O'Connell Unseated 
— Elected Lord Mayor of Dublin — Attacked by Shrews- 
bury — The Repeal Year, par excellence — The Association, 
Terms of Membership and Card — Peel and Repeal — Mon- 
ster Meetings at Ennis and Mullaghmast — European 
Fame — O'Connell and the Society of Friends — Letters to 
Dr Machale, ...... 



669-702 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE CLOSING SHADOWS AND THE END. 1843-1847. 

Clontarf— Excitement in Dublin — Indictment of O'Connell— 
Sensation— Forebodings — Address to the people — Con- 
dolences — Joseph Sturge — The Trial— Notices of the 
Judges, the Traversers, and the Counsel in the Case — 
Charge of the Chief-Justice — The Verdict— O'Connell in 
the House — Excitement over the Country — The Sentence 
— Incarceration — First Day of Imprisonment — Respect 
Shown the Prisoners — Dinner Parties and Bon-Mots — ■ 
McCarthy's Poem — Gives and Refuses Audiences — 
Reversal of Judgment and Liberation — Ovation — Home- 
Shadows — The Young Irelanders — Rescript from Rome — 
The Famine — Bids Farewell to Ireland — Hopes to Die at 
Rome — Diary of his Servant — Montalembert's Condolence 
— Last Hours — Death in Peace— The Faithful round the 
Bier— Funeral Obsequies and Eloge — " The Dead Tri- 
bune" ....... 705-774 



who are guilty of injustice. This revolution was termed a 
rebellion, because the cries of those who initiated it were 
stifled in blood and death. 

History repeats itself. It may be useful to remember 
this at a time when there is a probability of another re- 
volution, none the less dangerous to public safety, because 
it lias its inception in a demand for personal liberty, — 
not indeed the personal liberty of individual freedom to do 
justice, but the personal liberty to prevent the doing of 
justice by others. 

The American revolution was settled by law ; the French 
revolution was quelled by the power of one man. America 
obtained the freedom which every state must have if it is 
to bear its part creditably in the political world. France 
was delivered from the despotism of many by the power of 
one ; hence when the personal influence of the individual 
ceased, the multitude were left to seek other guides, with 
what result we all know. It might be king, or it might 
be kaiser, who influenced the impetuous Gaul ; as long as 
the influence lasted all was well, or appeared well ; the 
influence once withdrawn, and the hero dethroned, for 
any reason, or for none, the country is again a prey to 
anarchy. 

In Great Britain there was sufficient law to steer the 
bark of government over the torrents of revolution, but, 
unfortunately, there was not always sufficient justice. The 
law may be good, but if it is not administered just 1 } - , the 






1 



results arc scarce!}' less fatal than it' there had been no law 
to administer. 

In England, law required justice to be done to the poor, 
speaking broadly ; but practically the law was not always 
administered justly, and had not private individuals been 
far more generous in practice than in theory, the peasants 
of Great Britain would have given trouble to their masters, 
and something more than trouble. 

In Ireland, the laws, as made by Great Britain, and 
enforced by Great Britain, were not just ; and in Ireland 
there was more than trouble. 

From time to time the people rose up as they could 
against public injustice, against public oppression, but 
might was for the time stronger than right, and the Irish 
Celt was too often a victim at the shrine of an unmanly 
revenge. Still something was gained even by these dis- 
astrous attempts. 1 There were men in Ireland, and there are 
men in Ireland, who think little of the personal sacrifice 
of liberty or life, if they may but gain some increase of 
liberty, some happier condition of life for those who shall 
come after them. 

It remained for O'Connell to show that attention could 

1 I have confined myself almost exclusively to English authorities for 
proof of every statement made in this work with regard to the condition 
of Ireland. In a letter from Edward Forbes, Esq , to William Wickham, 
Esq., dated Dublin Castle, July 28, 1798, he says, " The universality of 
conspiracy, the frequent debates and the consequent trials keep up 
irritation. Our military is also disorderly, and our yeomen resentful 





be attracted to Irish affairs by public agitation, and that, 
when attention was once given to them, some at least 
would see the necessity for a government of that country 
which should not excite rebellion by the enforcement of 
unjust laws, or perpetuate it by cruelty in the punishment 
of revolts excited by those laws. 



O'Connell was born at Carhen, near Cahirciveen, on the 
6th of August 1775. 

The O'Conails, or O'Connells, were formerly possessed of 
the lordship of Magh-O-Goinin, now Magonihy, in Kerry. 
The chiefs of the sept were transported to Clare during the 
usurpation of Oliver Cromwell. 

Hugh O'Connell, of the race of Fiacha-Finghine, son of 
Darie-Cearb, married Margaret, the daughter of Moenmoy 
O'Brien, prince of Thomond. His son — 

Geoffry O'Connell married Catherine, daughter of 
O'Connor Kerry. His sons — 

Donal, who married Honoria, the daughter of O'Sullivan 
Bere ; 

Hugh, who was knighted by Sir Richard Nugent, lord- 



j %:.. 



m 






.... We get rid of seventy prisoners, many of the most important 
of whom we could not try, and who could not he disposed of without 
doing such a violence to the principles of law and evidence as could not 
he well justified. Our zealots and yeomen do not relish this compro- 
mise, and there has heen a fine hu/.z on the subject, hut it being known 
the Chancellor most highly approves of it, the tone softens." — Corn- 
wullis Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 378. 



il 



deputy of Ireland, with whom he was a great favourite. 
Tliis chieftain married Mary, base-daughter of Donal Mac- 
Carthy Mor, whose son — 

Maurice declared for Perkin Warbeck, but obtained 
the pardon of Henry VII., through the influence of Mac- 
Carthy Mor, on the 24th of August 1496. He married 
Juliana, the daughter of Rory O'Sullivan Mor. His 
son — 

Morgan married Ebzabeth, the daughter of O'Donovan, 
the chief of Clan-Cathail, in Carbery. His son — 

Aodh or Hugh married Mora, the daughter of Sir Tadg 
O'Brien, of Baille-na-Carriga, in the county of Clare. His 
son — 

Morgan, called of Ballycarbery, high-sheriff of the county 
of Kerry, married Helena, daughter of Donal MacCarthy. 
His son — 

Richard assisted the Elizabethan generals against the 
great Geraldine, surrendered his estates, and obtained a 
re-grant thereof through the influence of the lord-deputy. 
He married Johanna, the daughter of Ceallaghan Mac- 
Carthy, proprietor of Carriguamult, in the county of Cork. 
His son — 

Maurice was high sheriff of Kerry, and married Margaret, 
the daughter of Conchobhar, or Connor, O'Callaghan. His 
6on — 

Bartholomew married Honoria MacCrohan's daughter. 
His son — 




Geoffrey married Miss Barret, of county Cork. His 
son — 

Daniel, of Aghagabhar, married Alice, tlie daughter of 
Christopher Segrave, Esq., of Cabra, in the county of 
Dublin. His son — 

John, called of Aghagower and Darrynane, married 
Elizabeth, the daughter of Christopher Conway, Esq., of 
Clachane, or Cloghane, in the county of Kerry. His 
son — 

Daniel married Mary, the daughter of Dubh O'Donoghue, 
of Anwyss, in the county of Kerry. His son — 

Morgan, of Cahirciveen, in the barony of Iveragh, 
married Catherine, the daughter of John O'Mullane, Esq., 
of Whitechurch, by whom he had ten children, who lived 
to the age of maturity; viz., four sons and six daughters. 
The sons were : first, Daniel, the subject of this sketch ; 
second, Maurice, an officer in the British service, who died 
at St Domingo, in 1796; third, John O'Connell ; and 
fourth, James O'Connell, now Sir James, Bart., of Lake- 
view. The daughters were : first, Mary, who married 
Jeremiah M'Carlhy, Esq. of Woodview, County Cork; 
second, Honora, the wife of Daniel 0' Sullivan, Esq., of 
Reendonegan, in that county ; third, Ellen, who married 
Daniel O'Connell, Esq., solicitor-at-law ; fourth, Bridget, 
wbo married Myles M'Sweeny, Esq., late of Drounquinney ; 
fifth, Catherine, who married Humphry Moynihan, Esq., 
of Freemount, both in the county Kerry ; and sixth, 




Alice, who married William Francis Finn, Esq., of Tully- 
roan, in the county Kilkenny, for many years M.P. for that 
county. 

" Daniel O'Connell, who married Morna Duiv, 2 and 
died in the year 1774, left his estate of Darrynane to his 
eldest son, Maurice O'Connell, and he having no family, 
adopted Daniel O'Connell [the Liherator] and his brother 
Maurice. John O'Connell, the Liberator's son, in a sketch 



2 Morna Duiv, or Black Mary, was a remarkable character. The Kerry 
people are, or perhaps we should say were, noted for the facility and 
appropriateness with which they gave nicknames. These names were, and 
still are in common use. In fact, they are almost necessary to distinguish 
the members of different families where a number of people all bear the 
same surname. This lady belonged to the old sept of the O'Donoghues 
of the Lakes, and was not a little proud of her descent. Her violence of 
denunciation, and her remarkable powers of invective are still remem- 
bered in Kerry. It would appear that she kept the purse, for when 
paying the labourers their weekly wages she would thunder forth to each 
i" her native language, ' May God prosper, or make away your wages as 
you earned them.' Morna was also a poetess, and her daughter, Mrs 
O'Leary, wrote a poem of fierce invective on the death of her husband, 
Arthur O'Leary, who was shot by a common soldier for refusing to sell 
his horse to a Protestant for five pounds. " Thank God," adds my in- 
formant, "those days are past." Morna Duiv's eldest son Maurice, 
who adopted the Liberator, was known by the sobriquet of " Old Hunt- 
ing-cap." He died at the advanced age of ninety-five. I am told he was 
a splendid old man, and though he became blind as years advanced, 
preserved his other faculties to the last. He always wore his hunting- 
cap. An old Irish bardic topographer writes thus of the O'Connells 

" O'Connell of the slender sword, 
Is over the bushy-footed hosts 
A hazel-tree of branching palms 
For the Munster plain of horse hosts." 



COUNT 0' COX SELL. 



of his father's life, writes thus of another Daniel O'Connell 
(see note at the end of this chapter) : — 

" Respecting him there existed many peculiar circum- 
stances. First, he was the two-and-twentieth child of 
his father and mother. Secondly, he entered the French 
service as a sub-lieutenant of Clare's regiment, at the 
age of fourteen, in the year 1759. Thirdly, unaided by 
anything but his merit, he rose to the rank of major- 
general. He became colonel-commandant of the German 
regiment, in the French service, of Salm-Salm, of two 
battalions, of twelve hundred men each, which he con- 
verted from an undisciplined mob into confessedly the 
finest regiment in the great French camp, at Metz, in 
1787. Fourthly, he served at the siege of Gibraltar, in 
1782, being then the second lieutenant-colonel of the 
regiment of royal Swedes — the first lieutenant-colonel 
being the Count Fersen, remarked for his personal beauty, 
and his alleged intrigues at the court of Louis XVI. 
Fifthly, Colonel Daniel Count O'Connell — to which rank 
he had then arrived — volunteered, with one hundred men, 
as marines, in the ship of the French admiral, who vainly 
endeavoured to prevent the relief of Gibraltar by Lord 
Hood. Sixthly, he was severely wounded in the actual 
attack upon Gibraltar, when the French were driven off by 
General (afterwards Lord) Elliot ; and it was because of 
the gallantry he then displayed, that Louis XVI. conferred 
upon him the command of the regiment of Salm-Salm, 



Qss( 



already mentioned. Seventhly, he was appointed, in the 
year 1788, one of the inspectors-general of the French in- 
fantry. He was the actual author of the system of in- 
ternal arrangements of the infantry forces now universally 
adopted in all the European armies. 3 Eighthly, he was 
entrusted in 1789, by Louis XVI., during the first revolu- 
tionary violence, with the command of ten thousand of the 
foreign troops by which Paris was surrounded — and the 
writer of this sketch has often heard him declare, that if 
Louis XVI. had permitted the foreign troops to crush the 
Parisian revolutionary mobs, they were both able and 
willing to do so ; but the humanity of that benevolent, 
but weak monarch prevented the making of the great 
experiment of suppression. Ninthly, he remained about 
the person of the king as long as it was possible for 
personal devotion to be of any use; and only emigrated 



* Sir Bernard Burke, with referenca to this system, tells us, that in 
the year 1788, " The French Government resolved that the art of war 
should undergo revision ; and a military board was formed for tlm 
purpose, comprising four general officers and one colonel. The colonel 
selected was O'Connell, who was esteemed one of the most scientific 
officers in the service. Without patronage or family he had risen to a 
colonelcy before he had attained his fortieth year. Only a few meetings 
of the board had taken place when the superior officers, struck with the 
depth and accuracy of information, great military genius, and correct 
views displayed by Colonel O'Connell, unanimously agreed to confide to 
him the renewal of the whole French military code ; and he executed 
the arduous duty so perfectly that his tactics were those followed in the 
eariy campaigns of revolutionised France, adhered to by Napoleon, and 
adopted by Prussia, Austria, Russia, and England." 



when it was impracticable to serve the king by any 
other conduct. He then made the Duke of Bruns- 
wick's campaign, as colonel d la suite, in the regiment 
of hussars, called ' De Berchiny ; ' and, after the close 
of that disastrous campaign, repaired to England, where 
he was principally instrumental in prevailing on the 
British Government to take into their service the officers 
of the Irish Brigade late in the employment of France. 
Tenthly, there were six regiments forming that brigade in 
the British service ; and the command of one of them was 
conferred upon him. Those regiments were exceedingly ill 
treated by the British Government ; and the officers (with 
the exception of the colonels) were unceremoniously put 
upon half-pay. The colonels, however, were, by stipula- 
tion, entitled to their full pay for life ; and he accordingly 
enjoyed that pay, and his rank of colonel in the British 
service, during the rest of his life. Being married to a 
St Domingo lady, he returned to France at the peace of 
Amieus, to make his claims to her estate ; but, on the 
renewal of hostilities, he was detained as a prisoner in 
France until the restoration of the Bourbon family. 
Eleventhly, upon the accession of Louis XVIII. , he was 
restored to his rank as general in the French service, and 
received his full pay both as a French general and a 
British colonel, from 1814 to the downfall of Charles X. 
ia 1830. Having refused to take the oath of allegiance to 
Louis Philippe, he lost his French pay ; but retained his 




pay as British colonel until 1834, when he died in his 
ninety-first year." 4 

As Daniel O'Connell's grandfather had twenty-two chil- 
dren, and his father ten, a more detailed account of his 
family connections would occupy too much space, and would 
scarcely he of general interest. Mr O'Neill Daunt gives an 
amusing anecdote on this suhject in his " Personal Recol- 
lections of O'Connell." 

" My grandmother," said the Liberator, " had twenty-two chil- 
dren, and half of them lived beyond the age of ninety 

Old Maurice O'Connell of Darrynane pitched upon an oak-tree to 
make his own coffin, and mentioned his purpose to a carpenter. 
In the evening, the butler entered after dinner to say that the 
carpenter wanted to speak to him. ' For what ? ' asked my 
uncle. ' To talk about your honour's coffin,' said the carpenter, 
putting his head inside the door over the butler's shoulder. I 
wanted to get the fellow out, but my uncle said : ' Oh ! let him 
in, by all means. Well, friend, what do you want to say to me 
about my coffin 1 ' — ' Only, sir, that I sawed the oak-tree your 
honour was speaking of into seven-foot plank.' — ' That would be 
wasteful,' said my uncle. ' I never was more than six feet and 
an inch in my vamps, the best day I ever saw.' — ' But your 
honour will stretch after death,' said the carpenter. ' Not eleven 
inches, I am sure, you blockhead ! But 1 11 stretch, no doubt, 
perhaps a couple of inches or so. Well, make my coffin six feet 
six, and I '11 warrant that will give me room enough.' " 6 

Morgan O'Connell, of Carhen, had a fair income, 

though only a second son. It is noticeable and character- 

4 Sketch of the Life of Daniel O'Connell, Esq., M.P., by his son 
John O'Connell, late M.P., p. 3. 

6 Personal Recollections of O'Connell by O'Neill Daunt. 



CAREEN. 



istic of the times that he was obliged to make his first pur- 
chase of land through the intervention of a trustee ; and. 
although the consideration was paid by him, yet if the 
trustee (a Protestant) had chosen to violate the trust, he 
might have taken the property to himself. Any Protes- 
tant in the community, who chose to file a " bill of dis- 
covery," could compel that trust to be disclosed, and could 
take possession of the estate, without repaying any part of 
the purchase-money. 6 

The young Daniel spent his boyhood partly with his father 
at Carhen, and partly with his uncle at Darrynane. 
There is ample evidence that he was a child of more than 
ordinary intellect, and of more than ordinary observation. 
He has left his earliest impressions on record, and the effect 
which it had deserves special notice. 

The famous Paul Jones got command of three French 7 

6 Sketch by John O'Connell, page 6. 

7 Paul Jones' expedition caused considerable disgust and dismay. 
Mr Beresi'ord wrote thus in a letter on the subject dated Dublin, April 27, 
1778 : — " Perhaps the most interesting to you may be to know the dis- 
grace brought upon the navy of Great Britain by a dirty privateer of 18 
guns, called, I think, the Sanger, commanded by a Scotchman of the 
name of Jones. You have already heard of this vessel having come into 
Carrickfergus Bay, and dropped anchor by the Drake sloop-of-war of 20 
guns, and of her retiring upon the Drake's firing at her. She kept at 
the mouth of the harbour for eighteen hours afterwards, then sailed for 
Whitehaven, where you have heard what she did, as also in Scotland. 
She then came back here to sail again into Belfast ; but the Drake 
having gone out on a cruise, met her opposite to Donaghadee, where they 
engaged, and after thirty-eight hours, she took the Drake, having k il led 
her captain, his clerk, and several men, and wounded Lieutenant Dobba 



vessels in 1778 to cruise in the Irish seas and the English 
Channel. He manned his small fleet with English and 
Irish sailors who had been prisoners of war at Brest, and 
who preferred such service to dying amidst all the horrors 
of a French prison. A company of the Irish brigade, 
always ready to fight against the country that expatriated 
them, voluntered to serve on board the Bonhomnie Richard, 
his flag-ship. 

The first land made by Paul Jones upon his cruise from 
Brest, was on the coast of Kerry. When he closed in 
with the land, it fell a calm ; and, the tide running at the 
rate of three or four knots an hour, between the Skelligs 
rock and Valentia harbour, the situation of the vessels 
became dangerous, and the boats were sent a-head to tow 
them out of their difficult position. Towards dusk, a light 
breeze springing up, the vessels got head-way r , and were 



a volunteer from Carrickfergus, and twenty-one men, shattered the masts 
and rigging of the Drake. She took also two vessels which she sank, 
and two others which she carried with her. She sailed north, with all 
her sails crowded, with her prizes, intending for Brest. Three frigates 
are, I understand, after her, the Stag, of whom she has just twenty-four 
hours' law, the Boston, and another whose name I forget.'' An amusing 
observation of Mr Harwood's which he records at the end of this letter, 
deserves mention though not directly with the present subject. You re- 
member Mr Harwood's observation, " that His Majesty, God bless him, 
was the best natured man in his dominions ; he was taking always the 
worst lawyers in the nation to himself, and leaving the best ones for the 
defence of his subjects." Mr Harwood was M.P. for Doveraile in 1768, 
and was celebrated for his ban mots. — Correspondence of the Right Hon. 
John Bcresford, vol. i. p. 29. 




moving from the coast, and signals were made for the boats 
to cast off and come alongside ; hut two of the crews, con- 
sisting of some of the Brest prisoners, disregarded the 
signals, and, as the night darkened, pulled manfully for 
shore. They reached Valentia harbour safely, pursuit being 
impossible. 

Here they were received by a gentleman with apparent 
hospitality, but the hospitality was only apparent ; he at 
once despatched messengers privately to Tralee, that a 
sufficient force of military might be sent to apprehend 
them. 

O'Connell was but three years of age when he witnessed 
this treachery. Probably he did not understand it until 
long after ; but he often spoke of one of the prisoners with 
whose manner and appearance he had been very much 
struck. This man was mounted on a grey horse, and ap- 
peared to be the lawyer of the party, as he remonstrated 
very loudly against the injustice which they had suffered. 8 
By way of reprisals, Paul Jones seized some sailors 
whom he found at sea off the coast of Valentia. These men, 
either willingly or unwillingly, were engaged in the cele- 



8 " They remonstrated loudly against this treatment, alleging that they 
had not committed nor intended any breach of the laws, and that the 
authorities had no right to deprive them of their liberty. I well recol- 
lect a tall fellow who was mounted on a grey horse, remonstrating 
angrily at this coercion. No legal charge of course could be sustained 
against them, and accordingly in the end they were released." — Personal 
Recollections of O'Connell, by O'Neill Daunt. 




brated action off Flamborough Head, where Paul Jones 
compelled the Serapis to strike her colours to his Jleur- 
de-lis, but when in the act of securing his prize, his own 
ship sunk, shattered by the fight, and riddled by cannon 
shot. 

Lieutenants M'Carthy and Stack, who boarded with 
their few surviving marines from the tops, were the only 
French officers unhurt in the action, although they were 
the most exposed. M'Carthy died a lieutenant-colonel in 
the British service, and Stack died a general in the same 
service. 

The poor fishermen were taken to Brest, where they were 
allowed to labour in the arsenal, and saved money. In 
1846 one of these men had but recently died at a great 
age. He was a native of Valentia island, by name John 
Murphy ; but from the time of his compulsory adventure 
with the pirate, down to his latest day, he was better 
known by the sobriquet of "Paul Jones;", and such is 
the tenacity of the peasantry in matters of nomenclature, 
that his son, a respectable young farmer, was known as 
" Young Paul Jones." The father was a man of great 
industry and integrity, and died wealthy. 

Whatever motive the gentleman who entrapped Paul 
Jones' crew may have had, there is no doubt that the 
" King's Writ" did not always run very safely in Kerry; 
and that whatever righteous indignation may have been 
publicly shown, on the question of foreign marauders, there 



I 

Mi 

w 
I 



SMUGGLING IN KERRY. 



was a good deal of private connivance at overt acts of 
felony. 

Dr William Forbes Taylor, who wrote " Reminiscences 
of Daniel O'Connell," under the nom de plume of a " Mun- 
ster Farmer," says : — 

"In consequence of this form of intercourse (the periodical 
emigrations to join the Irish Brigade in France), what the law 
called smuggling, and what those engaged in it called free trade, 
was very active between the French ports and this part of Ire- 
land. Morgan O'Connell's store, or shop, at Cahirciveen, received 
many a cargo of French laces, wines, and silks, which were sold 
at an immense profit, in the south and west of Ireland, and 
enabled him rapidly to accumulate a large fortune. English 
cruisers avoided the iron-bound coast of Kerry, which then had a 
reputation even worse than its reality. It was said, that the men 
of the Kerry coast combined wrecking with smuggling ; and that, 
for both purposes, they had organised a very complete system of 
posts and telegraphic signals along the bluff headlands. 'When a 
suspicious sail was announced, nice calculations were made to 
ascertain her probable position after nightfall. A horse was then 
turned out to graze on the fields near that part of the shore 
opposite to which she most probably was, and a lantern was tied 
to the horse's head. Viewed from a distance, this light, rising 
and falling as the animal fed, produced precisely the same effect 
as light in the cabin of a distant ship. The crew of the stranger- 
vessel, thus led to believe that there was open water before them, 
steered boldly onwards, and could not discover their error until 
they had dashed against the rocks. There is no reason to believe 
that the O'Connells engaged in such treacherous transactions ; but 
there is indisputable evidence, that they were largely practised in 
this part of the country, and that they afforded great protection 
to smuggling, by deterring the English cruisers from the coast. 
Daniel O'Connell's infancy was thus passed amid scenes likely to 





impress his mind with stern hostility to the Protestant ascend- 
ancy, and the English Government by which it was supported. 
In the name of that ascendancy, he was taught that his ancestors 
had been plundered ; in the name of that ascendancy, he saw his 
religion insulted, and his family oppressed ; for the penal laws 
opposed serious impediments to his father's investment of the 
profits of his trade in the acquisition of land. All around him 
were engaged in a fiscal war with the English government, and, 
in the code of Kerry ethics, a seizure by the officers of the 
Custom-House was regarded as a robbery, and the defrauding of 
the revenue a simple act of justice to one's self and family." 9 

Education was also under penal law. By the penal 
laws it was " an offence" for a man to practise his religion. 



11 

i 



9 Proof has so often been given of the truth of this assertion, that it 
Becms scarcely necessary to repeat it here ; yet the Irish are so frequently 
taunted with laziness and indifference, that it should be remembered 
how little there has been in their antecedents to have induced habits 
of industry. They were not allowed to engage in trade. Arthur 
Young, after alluding to the discouragements, under the penal laws, to 
Catholics engaging in any regular trade, requiring both industry and 
capital, exclaims — " If they succeed and make a fortune, what are they 
to do with it ? They can neither buy land, nor take a mortgage, nor 
even fine down the rent of a lease. Where is there a people in the world 
to be found industrious under such circumstances 1" 

Down to the present centuiy, the smugglers of England were as inju- 
rious to their own Government, as serviceable to that of France. The 
Emperor Napoleon I. said, at St Helena, to Dr O'Meara — "During the 
war with you, all the intelligence I received from England came through 
the smugglers. They are terrible people, and have courage and ability 
to do anything for money. ... At one time, there were upwards of 500 
of them at Dunkerque. I had every information 1 wanted through 
them. They brought over newspapers and despatches from the spies 
that we had in London. They took over spies from France, landed and 
kept them in their houses for some days, then dispersed them over the 
country, and brought them back when wanted." 



£A 



,1 

SI 



Englishmen had changed their religion, and therefore the 
Irishman should change his. But there was one curious 
fallacy in the mode of reasoning by which this conclusion 
was evolved. Englishmen declared (in theory, and very 
loudly), that they claimed for themselves the right of free 
judgment, of believing as they thought fit, of interpreting 
the Bible for themselves. But for the exercise of this right, 
for which they even asserted a divine origin, a similar 
liberty was not allowed to others — above all to their Celtic 
neighbour. It was indeed true that they denied this right 
even to each other, that they were by no means agreed as to 
which was the divine religion, which men should accept as 
such ; that Puritan and Baptist, Roundhead and Cavalier, 
persecuted each other when they could, for the love of God, 
as cruelly as they united in persecuting the Catholic ; * but 
this was poor consolation to the Irish. Englishmen had not 
often, or for any great length of time, the power of perse- 
cuting each other on religious grounds ; unhappily for 
themselves they had a permanent opportunity, and a per- 
manent power of exercising such persecutions in Ireland. 



1 " Afther well damning one half the community, 
To pray God to keep all in pace an' in unity." 

— The Fudges in England. 
There is no doubt that these extremely clever sarcasms on the anomalies 
of religious strife, had a powerful influence in removing prejudice, if not 
ignorance, and showed the folly of the state of mind in which a man 
"Pledged himself to be no more 

With Ireland's wrongs begrieved or sharam'd ; 
To vote her grievances a bore, 
So she may suffer and be ." 




In entering fully into this matter, we would observe 
that it is from no desire to recal the bitter past, or to excite 
feelings which are suppressed, if they are not passed away. 
But it would be quite impossible to understand O'Connell's 
life, or O'Connell's work, unless these subjects were fully 
considered and thoroughly understood. In his boyhood be 
was himself the victim of these oppressions, and though his 
experience of them was comparatively trifling, it should not 
be forgotten that he lived at a period when old men coidd 
tell him tales of personal pains and penalties, of a rule 
which a truthful English Protestant writer designated as 
only fit for the meridian of Barbary. 2 

In the year 1695, some eighty years before the time of 
which we write, when Lord Capel was appointed Viceroy, 
he at once summoned a parliament, which sat for several 
sessions, and in which some of the penal laws against 
Catholics were enacted. As I believe the generality even 

2 "Severity which seemed calculated for the meridian of Bar- 
bary, while others remain yet the law of the land, which would, if 
executed, tend more to raise than to quell an insurrection. From all 
which it is manifest, that the gentlemen of Ireland never thought of a 
radical cure, from overlooking the real cause of disease, which, in fact, 
lay in themselves, and not in the wretches .they doomed to the gallows. 
Let them change their own conduct entirely, and the poor will not long 
riot. Treat them like men, who ought to be as free as yourselves ; put 
an end to that system of religious persecution, which, for seventy years, 
has divided the kingdom against itself— in these two circumstances lies 
the cure of insurrection ; perform them completely, and you will have 
an affectionate poor, instead of oppressed and discontented vassals." — 
Young's Tour, vol. ii. 42. 



A PROTESTANT PROTEST 



of educated persons, both in England and Ireland, are 
entirely ignorant of what these laws really were, I shall 
give a brief account of their enactments, premising first, 
that seven lay peers and seven Protestant bishops had the 
honourable humanity to sign a protest against them. 

(1.) The Catholic peers were deprived of their right to 
sit in parliament. (2.) Catholic gentlemen were forbidden 
to be elected as members of parliament. (3.) All Catholics 
were denied the liberty of voting, and excluded from all 
offices of trust, and indeed from all remunerative employ- 
ment, however insignificant. 3 (4.) They were fined £60 
a-month for absence from the Protestant form of worship. 
(5.) They were forbidden to travel five miles from their 
houses, to keep arms, to maintain suits at law, or to be 
guardians or executors. (6.) Any four justices of the pence 
could, without further trial, banish any man for life if he 
refused to attend the Protestant service. (7.) Any two 
justices of the peace could call any man over sixteen before 
them, and if he refused to abjure the Catholic religion, they 
could bestow his property to the next of kin. (8.) No 
Catholic could employ a Catholic schoolmaster to educate 
Ills children ; and if he sent his child abroad for education, 



ffl 



A v -^ 



3 A petition was sent in to Parliament by the Protestant porters of 
Dublin, complaining of Darby Ryan for employing Catholic porters. 
The petition was respectfully received, and referred to a " Committee 
of Grievances."— Com. Jour., vol. ii. f. 699. Such an instance, and it is 
only one of many, is the best indication of the motive for enacting the 
penal laws, and the cruelty of them. 



,o 



he was subject to a fine of £100, and the child could not 
inherit any property either in England or Ireland. (9.) Any 
Catholic priest who came to the country should be hanged. 
(10.) Any Protestant suspecting any other Protestant of 
holding property* in trust" for any Catholic, might file a 
bill against the suspected trustee, and take the estate or 
property from him. (11.) Any Protestant seeing a Catholic 
tenant-at-will on a farm, which, in his opinion, yielded 
one-third more than the yearly rent, might enter on that 
farm, and by simply swearing to the fact, take possession. 
(12.) Any Protestant might take away the horse of a 
Catholic, no matter how valuable, by simply paying him 
£5. (13.) Horses and waggons belonging to Catholics, 
were in all cases to be seized for the use of the militia. 



4 It will be remembered that at this time Catholics were in a ma- 
jority of at least five to one over Protestants. Hence intermarriages 
took place, and circumstances occurred, in which Protestants found it 
their interest to hold property for Catholics, to prevent it from being 
seized by others. A gentleman of considerable property in the county of 
Kerry has informed me that his property was held in this way for several 
generations. 

It was the opinion of O'Connell himself, that no landed estates could 
have remained in the possession of Catholics, " only that individual Pro- 
testants were found a great deal honester than the laws. The Freeman 
family of Castlecor," he observed, " were trustees for a large number of 
Catholic gentlemen in the county of Cork. In Kerry there was a Pro- 
testant, named Hugh Falvey, who acted as trustee for many Catholic 
proprietors there. In Dublin there was a poor Protestant, in very 
humble circumstances, who was trustee for several Catholic gentlemen, 
and discharged his trust with perfect integrity." — O'Neill Haunt's Personal 
Recollections. 



(14.) Any Catholic gentleman's child who became a Pro- 
testant, could at once take possession of his father's 
property. 

O'Connell, who had a fund of anecdote, was accustomed 
to relate an amusing incident on the subject of the peculiar 
facilities afforded for a change of religion. 

A Mr Myers, of Roscommon, was threatened that a "bill 
of discovery " would be filed against him ; in other words, 
that one of the enactments of the penal laws would be put 
in force, and that he, being a Catholic, would be ejected by 
a Protestant who would legally claim his estate. 

Mr Myers preferred his property to his religion, and 
immediately posted to Dublin in all haste. Here he pro- 
ceeded to the Protestant Archbishop, and informed him of 
his desire to be received into the State Church. The arch- 
bishop examined him upon the points of difference be- 
tween the two churches, and found that he knew nothing 
at all about the matter. He accordingly said he could not 
receive him into the Anglican Church unless he should get 
some previous instruction; and politely offered to commit 
him to the care of the Rector of Castlerea, who chanced to 
be in Dublin at the time. The proposal was most gratify- 
ing to Mr Myers, for he and the rector had long been boon 
companions. They met in Dublin, as they had met in 
Roscommon, dined together every day for a week, and thus 
Mr Myers went through his course of theological instruc- 
tion. The conversation may not have been very spiritual, 



but O'Connell declares that a good deal of spirits were 
consumed. Be this as it may, and it certainly was the 
custom of the times to indulge freely, Mr Myers considered 
himself sufficiently prepared, and his friend the rector 
agreed with him. 

Whatever the private feelings or reluctance of the arch- 
bishop may have been, he could scarcely refuse to receive 
an important convert ; he permitted him to make his solemn 
public abjuration of the errors of Popery, and to receive the 
Protestant sacrament. In order to celebrate the happy 
event, the prelate invited Myers and several zealous Pro- 
testant friends to dinner. When the cloth was removed, 
his Grace thus addressed the convert : " Mr Myers, you 
have this day been received into the true Protestant 
Church. For this you should thank God. I learn with 
pleasure from the Rector of Castlerea that you have ac- 
quired an excellent knowledge of the basis of the Protest- 
ant religion. Will you be so kind as to state, for the 
edification of the company, the grounds upon which you 
have cast aside Popery and embraced the Church of Eng- 
land.' — ' Faith, my lord,' replied Myers, ' I can easily do 
that ; the grounds of my conversion to the Protestant re- 
ligion are two thousand five hundred acres of the best 
grounds in the county Roscommon." The reply of the 
archbishop is not on record, but we hope there are few 
who will not agree with us in thinking it very pitiful and 
very little creditable to humanity, that man should be com- 




0' CO XX ELL'S FAMILY. 



pelled by his fellow-man to violate his conscience on the 
pretence of enforcing a religion. 

O'Connell was singularly susceptible of female influence, 
and if at one period of his early life this susceptibility led 
him into evil, it was only because all that is best and 
purest in human nature is liable to perversion. He was 
tenderly attached to his mother, and, like many great men, 
attributed much of his success in life to her influence, ex- 
ample, and teaching. 

He often spoke of her in after years ; and even when his 
wonderful career was near its close, in 1841, he wrote 
thus : — 

" I am the son of a sainted mother, who watched over my 
childhood with the most faithful care ; she was of a high order of 
intellect, and what little I possess was bequeathed me by her. 
I may, in fact, say without vanity, that the superior situation in 
which I am placed by my countrymen has been owing to her. 
Her last breath was passed, I thank Heaven, in calling down 
blessings on my head ; and I valued her blessing since. In the 
perils and the dangers to which I have been exposed through life, 
I have regarded her blessing as an angel's shield over me ; and as 
it has been my protection in this life, I look forward to it also as 
one of the means of obtaining hereafter a happiness greater than 
any this world can give." 6 

He was proud of his family also, and anxious to discover 

any mention of them in Irish history. However he ma}' 

have used the suaviter in modo as his style in winning 

popular affection and applause, he could practise the Jbr- 

' In the Belfast Vindicator, letter dated 20th January 1841. 



-' ; 



titer in re, if any undue, or shall we say "blarneying," 
influence was tried on him personally. There was 
some talk at Darrynane 6 one day on the subject of pedi- 

6 The following account of the Abbey of Darrynane, of which an 
illustration is given at the head of this chapter, was drawn up for 
my "History of Kerry" by the present proprietor, Daniel O'Connell, 
Esq., J.P., the grandson of the Liberator. This gentleman is devoted 
to archaeological pursuits, and a contributor to many scientific journals. 
The "abbey," so called, of Darrynane, or Ahavore, was a small establish- 
ment of Canons Regular of St Augustine. The remains consist of the 
church and some domestic buildings. 

The church is a simple parallelogram, about 40 feet by 18 feet. The 
walls remain, but the roof has long since disappeared. There are two 
doors in the north and south walls, towards the west end, opposite one 
another : that to the north has been the principal entrance, and lias 
some slight remains of a moulded jamb and arch, the mouldings being 
of very early character. One of the heads which supported the label 
moulding, and some traces of the moulding itself, remain, but in a very 
worn and mutilated condition. The south door opened into the court- 
yard of the monastery, and had a plain chamfered jamb and arch. Both 
doors had pointed arches. On the north side, the church was lit by two 
small round-headed lancets, having the common early " chamfer and 
square" for jamb and arch moulding. A similar window is in the south- 
east corner. The east window is a triplet of lancets, very narrow, with 
pointed heads, and similar mouldings to the side windows. These east 
windows have been at some period blocked up with masonry to nearly 
half their height ; apparently at the same time the doors have been 
partially blocked up on the inside, and converted into square-headed 
openings. All the windows have very wide splays internally, carried 
r und the heads of the eastern group. None of the windows have any 
rebate or groove for glass, but seem to have been barred with iron. 

The floor has been greatly raised by interments. A piscina with 
plain chamfer and round-beaded trefoil arch remains. It has had a 
double basin, and a credence-shelf. Owing to the rise of the floor, the 
basin is now only a few inches over the ground inside. 

A rude block of masonry at the east end formed an altar. Although 



: x 



grees and descents. O'Connell said something about his 
family. " Oh !" exclaimed a guest, " I saw your name in 
Macgeogehan's " History of Ireland," somewhere at a very 
early date." 

The Liberator looked greatly pleased. " Pray get the 
book," he said ; " it is in the library." The book was 
got, but the passage was not forthcoming, and the gentle- 



tlie upper part and slab are gone, still this rises much above the sill of 
the east windows, and is singularly high compared to the piscina. It 
would seem, that, after being disused, and the floor raised, the church 
had been again adapted for service, the present altar built, and the 
windows behind blocked up to suit the altered level. A curious pro- 
jection of the rubble blocking of the north-east lancet seems to have 
served as a corbel for a statue or lamp. 

The domestic buildings are in the form of an |_ one limb joining the 
church near the south-east angle, the other projecting from this to the 
west. These are very rude, and have no architectural features of any 
interest. The limb joining the church has some rude windows, and a 
door of rubble work in the east side wall, but they are much injured. 
A door, with pointed arch of rubble, may be traced in the west wall, 
near the south-west angle. It is blocked, and the gable of the second 
wing built against it. Of the latter, only the gables and portions of the 
6ide walls remain. 

All the buildings are of rubble work, very rude, with a great quantity 
of mortar of the local slate stone. The window and door-dressings in 
the church are of brown sandstone, from a quarry near the ruins. Owing 
to the bad weather-quality of this, they are much injured by time. 

The walls of the domestic buildings do not bond with those of the 
church, nor with one another. The buildings appear, therefore, to ha\ e 
been erected at three distinct periods — the church being probably the 
earliest. No tire-places nor flues remain, or can have existed. 

In consequence of the east wall of the church having settled out, and 
threatening to fall, Mr O'Connell has lately had two strong buttresses 
built to support it. 




i 



w 



man was obliged to admit that he believed he had made 
a mistake. 

O'Connell flung himself out of the room with a petulance 
lie seldom exhibited, and, as he retired, was heard muttering 
something about " humbug." As I have this anecdote from 
a gentleman who was present, there can be no doubt of its 
authenticity. 

O'Neill Daunt says in his " Recollections "that O'Connell 
"was angry at the disparaging manner in which his 
family had been spoken of by an anonymous writer in the 
' Mask,' who described leading members of Parliament. 
' The vagabond allows me a large share of talent, but he 
says I am of humble origin. My father's family was very 
ancient, and my mother was a lady of the first rank.' 7 

" In the time of James II., Maurice O'Coual, of the 
county Clare, was a general of brigade and colonel of the 
king's guards. In that regiment John O'Conal of Darry- 
nane — the lineal ancestor of the Liberator — served at the 
head of a company of foot which he himself had raised and 
embodied in the regiment. 

" When the Irish lost the day at Aughrim, John retired 
with his shattered regiment to Limerick, and was included in 
the treaty or capitulation of that stronghold. Respecting 



7 In one of Victor Hugo's works there is an analysis made by him of 
the great men of modern times who were respectively of noble; and 
plebeian blood, and among the former he classes " O'Connell, gentil- 
lionune Irlandais." 




JOHN 0' CO KNELL OF A8HT0WK. 



h 



this gentleman, O'Connell told an anecdote in the House 
of Commons, which awakened a storm of anger, groans, 
and turhulence. When the storm had abated, O'Connell, 
unabashed by the noisy vociferation of the house, pro- 
ceeded with his anecdote, which he deemed illustrative of 
the subject before him : ' On the morning of the battle of 
Aughrim, an ancestor of mine, who commanded a com- 
pany of infantry in King James's army, reprimanded one 
of his men who had neglected to shave himself, ' Oh ! your 
honour,' said the soldier, ' whoever takes the trouble of 
catting my head off in battle may take the trouble of 
shaving it when he goes home.' " 

Of another of his ancestors he spoke thus : — 
" In 1655, John O'Connell of Ashtown, near Dublin, 
the brother of the lineal ancestor of the Liberator, proved 
his good affection to Oliver Cromwell by conforming to 
Protestantism. He thereby preserved his estate. ' I saw 
his escutcheon," said the Liberator, ' on the wall of St 
James's church, in Dublin, some twenty years ago. I do 
not know if it be there still." 

In Smith's " History of Kerry," the O'Connell family and 
pedigree are scarcely mentioned. A reason is given for 
this omission which is singularly and painfully character- 
istic of the times : — 



" In the course of his literary peregrinations, Dr Smith visited 
Darrynane, where he was entertained for several days by the 
grandfather of the great Agitator. The patriarch of Iveragh, in 



the course of conversation, communicated to the historian many 
interesting particulars of local and domestic history. Warmed by 
his genial hospitality and delighted with his fund of anecdote, 
l>r Smith proposed to Mr O'Connell to devote a due proportion 
of the forthcoming history to the virtues and heroism of the Clan- 
Connell. The reply was not very encouraging : ' We have peace, 
in these glens, Mr Smith,' said the patriarch, ' and amid their 
Jiv seclusion enjoy a respite from persecution: we can still in these 

solitudes profess the beloved faith of our fathers. If man is 
against us, God assists us ; He gives us wherewithal to pay for the 
education of our children in foreign lands and to further their 
advancement in the Irish Brigade ; but if you make mention of 
me or mine, these sea-side solitudes will no longer yield us au 
asylum. The Sastsenagh will scale the mountains of Darrynane, 
and we too shall be driven out upon the world without house or 
home.' The. wishes of the patriarch were respected by the his- 
torian — a broken sentence is all he devotes to the annals of the 
Clan-Connell." 



In truth, this anecdote, for the authenticity of which we 
can vouch, reads but too much like the piteous plea of the 
Red Indian to the white man ; all he asks is to be left in 
peace, to be allowed to live, to be spared even his poverty. 
It is not creditable to our common humanity that such 
pleas should have ever been uttered by those who were once 
united in one faith, and who at least believed in one 
Father. 

O'Connell was also very particular that the date of his 
birth should be given correctly, and wrote on one occasion 
to contradict some mistakes which had been made on this 
subject. He commenced by saying that it was right to be 




accurate in trifles. He then goes on to say tbat a para- 
graph had appeared in the journals which he was desirous 
of contradicting. " It contained two mistakes — it asserted 
that I was horn in 1774, and secondly, that I was intended 
for the Church. I was not intended for the Church. No 
man respects, loves, or submits to the Church with more 
alacrity than I. But I was not intended for the priesthood. 
It is not usual with the Catholic gentry in Ireland to de- 
termine the religious destiny of their children ; and being 
an eldest son, born to an independence, the story of my 
having been intended for the Church is a pure fabrication. 
I was not born in the year 1774. Be it known to all whom 
it may concern that I was born on the 6th of August 1775, 
the very year in which the stupid obstinacy of British 
o\i\n-e>!iion forced the reluctant people of America to seek 
security in arms, and to commence that bloody struggle for 
national independence which has been in its results bene- 
ficial to England, whilst it has shed glory and conferred 
liberty, pure and sublime, on America." 8 

The Liberator's literary tastes manifested themselves 
early in life ; and again, in relating how he mastered the 
alphabet, we find yet another illustration of the unhappy 
state of unhappy Ireland. It was a crime for a man to 
have his children taught to read in Ireland ; and when it 
was found that Irish love of learning was too strong even 
for penal laws, and that the Irishman sent his sons to 

8 Dublin Evening Post, 17tk July 1828. 



obtain abroad the advantages that were denied to him at 
home, it was further made penal to seek education abroad. 
In truth, it was hard to know what was not penal in Ire- 
land for a Catholic, and, in truth, any reproach on " Irish 
ignorance " comes with an ill grace from those whose 
ancestors did their best to render Irishmen a nation of 
ignorant slaves. We may be pardoned for doubting, since 
we neither desire to deny our nationality nor apologise for 
it, if the case had been reversed, whether the English 
serf would have made as painful efforts, and as great sacri- 
fices to secure himself education, had it been thus denied 
to him. 

For Protestant education, however, every provision was 
made. For the upper classes there was Trinity College, 
Dublin ; for the lower classes there were the Charter Schools. 
These schools were founded in 1733, in response to a peti- 
tion of the Protestant primate and archbishop, clergy, and 
laity. The preamble of the petition ran thus : — 

" Humbly sheweth, — That in many parts of Ireland there are 
great tracks of mountaining (sic) and coarse land, of ten, twenty, 
or thirty miles in length, and of a considerable breadth, almost 
universally inhabited by Papists, and that in most parts of the 
same, and more especially in the provinces of Leinster, Munster, 
and Connaught, the Papists far exceed the Protestants in all sorts 
of numbers (sic). 

" That the generality of the Popish natives appear to have very 
little sense or belief of religion, but what they implicitly take from 
their clergy (to whose guidance in such matters they seem wholly 
to give themselves up), and thereby are unfit, not only in gross 



4 

w 

w 



% 



THE CHARTER SCHOOLS. 



ignoranee, but in great disaffection to your sacred Majesty and 
Government— so that, if some effectual method be not made use 
of to instruct these great numbers of people in the principles of 
loyalty and religion, there seems to be very little prospect but 
that superstition, idolatry, and disaffection to your Majesty, or 
to your royal posterity, will, from generation to generation, be 
propagated amongst them." 9 

And so the Charter Schools were established. It was the 
old story, as old as the first ages of Christianity: the Chris- 
tians were disloyal because they obeyed God, in preference 
to Csesar, even while they proved their loyalty to Caesar, in 
all that was not disloyal to their God, by pouring out their 
life's blood in torrents for the support of the empire. The 
Thundering Legion, whose Christian soldiers obtained by 
prayer x the salvation of the army of Marcus Aurelius, 
received no better treatment at the hands of their Pagan 
calumniators than the Irish who were loyal to James, the 
faithless Stuart. 

And these schools, in which the " ignorant " Irish were 
to receive their education, were thus described by the bene- 
volent Howard and Sir Jerome Fitzpatrick the Government 
inspector-general : — 

" The children, generally speaking, are unhealthy, half- 

8 " Ireland's Grievances — The Penal Laws," p. 29. Dublin: 1812. 
Catholics were not admitted to Trinity College, Dublin, until 1793, even 
as humble students, unambitious of academical honours or promotion. 

1 The authenticity of this miracle is admitted even by pagan histo- 
rians. See Dion Cassius, Capitolinus, Claudius, and Tillemont, voL ii. 
p. 370. 



U 






■ 






$ 






. 



^a_a-3^= ■*■— „z 



HEDGE SCHOOLMASTERS. 



starved, in rags, totally uneducated, too much worked, and 
in all respects shamefully neglected." 

The hedge-schoolmasters who taught in fear and trem- 
bling, while one pupil watched the road, that all might dis- 
perse promptly, if au enemy to learning came in sight, or the 
itinerant schoolmaster who wandered from house to house, 
as perhaps a safer method of obtaining a precarious exist- 
ence, were the only instructors of the Irish youth : yet for all 
that the Irish youth learned, and learned well, and held 
his place as a man of learning in after life in those Euro- 
pean courts where he was welcomed, and showed himself 
not only loyal to the foreign power under which he took 
military service, but also of no ordinary ability as a com- 
mander and a strategist. 

At a time when O'Connell's own father could not be 
lawfully his guardian, it can be a matter of little surprise 
that he learned the rudiments of education from an ordinary 
pedagogue. 2 



5 In 1703, it was enacted "that no Catholic could be guardian to, or 
have the custody or tuition of any orphan or child under the age of 21 
years, and that the guardianship, when a Catholic was entitled to it, 
should be disposed of by the Chancellor to the nearest Protestant rela- 
tion of the child, or to some other Protestant, who is thereby required 
to use his utmost care to educate and bring up such child in the Pro- 
testant religion. Any offence against this act was punished by a penally 
of £500." The act permitting Catholics to be guardians to their own 
children was not passed until 1782. 

Usher, who cannot be suspected of any partiality to " Papists," ha3 
himself given an account of his visit to Galway, where he found John 
Lynch, afterwards Bishop of Killala, teaching a school of humanity. 



JjT qfc'^fc 




Even in his own account of his first lesson in reading we 
see his preference for the " spoonful of honey" 3 suffici- 
ently manifested ; and though it cannot he doubted that his 
personal experience of the French Revolution had a power- 
ful effect on his future career, and made him tenaciously 
fearful of physical force, yet his natural character was 
gentle. The schoolmaster won his affection in a peculiar 
manner. His own son, John O'Connell, himself one of 
the best and gentlest of men, has left the account on 
record, and we give it in his words. 

" We had proofe," he says, " during our continuance in that citie, how 
his schollars profitted under him, by the verses and orations which they 
brought us." Usher then relates how he seriously advised the young 
schoolmaster to conform to the popular religion ; but, as Lynch declined 
to comply with his wishes, he was bound over, under sureties of £4S >0 
sterling, to " forbear teaching." The tree of knowledge was, in truth, 
forbidden fruit, and guarded sedulously by the fiery sword of the law. 

For further information on this subject, and fur details of the history 
of Irishmen who distinguished themselves abroad and at home under 
penal laws, we refer the reader to O'Callaghan's " History of the Irish 
Brigade," and to our " Illustrated History of Ireland." 

3 Mr O'Neill Daunt says in his "Reminiscences" — " On one occasion 

when O'Connell had listened to for a long time with great suavity, I 

said, 'You were infinitely more civil to Mr — than I could have been.' 

" ' My dear friend,' replied he, ' you will catch more flies with a spoon- 
ful of honey than with a hogshead of vinegar.' 

" He admits, however, that he could show symptoms of being bored 
now and then. 

" Some of the habitues of the Repeal Association who knew O'Connell's 
feelings on such matters, have whispered to me during the speech of a 
long-winded orator, ' Watch Dan, now ! observe how bored he is — there 
he sits with his hat pulled down over his eyes, patiently waiting until 
this gentleman finishes.' " 



I 



" An itinerant schoolmaster came to Carhen one day, and took 
the little fellow on his knee. He then took out a pocket-comb 
and combed the child's hair thoroughly without hurting him, as 
the rough country maids scarcely ever failed to do. In gratitude 
for exemption from his usual torture, the child readily consented 
to learn his letters from the old man ; and in the short space of 
an hour and a half, learned the whole alphabet perfectly and per- 
manently. 

" The moral of this tale is, not that you should comb children's 
heads gently, in order to ensure their learning quickly ; but that 
the difficulties of teaching them can be much lightened by a little 
care to conciliate their good-will to the task." 

It is just possible that the brain was nervously sensitive, 
as is frequently the case in children of more than ordinary 
capacity, and they may be tried to the very verge of 
endurance by ungentle usage. We agree with Mr 
O'Connell that children may be taught the alphabet with- 
out " combing the head gently," but it is worth considering 
that if delicate and sensitive children were treated with 
more consideration, it might be of advantage to them both 
morally and physically. 

O'Connell was then nearly four years old. The school- 
master's name was David Mahouey. 

In 1787, O'Connell was taken to the Tralee assizes 
and witnessed a curious exhibition of the fashion in which 
justice was administered in those days. From the manner 
in which the lower orders of Irish were hunted from one 
place to another, not only by the " English army," but 
even by their own lords, whose private feuds were neither 



Vft 



m 

m 

m 

M 




few nor far between, many of them took to a predatory 
life from necessity, and continued it from desire. A 
band of these unfortunate men, who were called Crelaghs, 
infested the mountains of Glencarra, and preyed on the 
cattle in Clare and Galway, which they drove away 
and sold daily in the fairs of Kerry ; or with impartial 
rapacity swept off the stolen beeves of Kerry and disposed 
of them retributively in Galway and Clare. The harassed 
farmers regarded these " Crelaghs " with terror and loath- 
ing : but their hatred was repressed by fear, because 
the Protestant gentry extended to the freebooters a kind 
of negative protection. A portion of the spoil which the 
grateful robbers presented to the sympathising magistrates 
rewarded this profitable connivance. Emboldened by an 
impunity which, having purchased, they regarded as a right, 
the robbers stole fourteen cows from the lands of Morgan 
O'Connell. Exasperated by this outrage, the father of 
the future Liberator, at the head of an armed party, 
penetrated the mountain defiles and proceeded to storm 
the haunt of the banditti. The struggle which ensued 
was of a very desperate and even sanguinary char- 
acter, as the Crelaghs offered a fierce resistance, in the 
course of which the father of young Daniel wounded one 
and captured two; while the remainder of the robbers 
broke through their assailants and effected their escape, to 
renew in another part of the country the depredations 
which made them so formidable in Glencarra. 



1 $ 

I 



ii 



JUSTICE IN IRELAND. 



m 



One evening, as Morgan O'Connell was riding home 
alone, he was set upon by these desperadoes; determined 
to revenge on his friendless head the injuries which, when 
surrounded by companions, he had inflicted on them. 
Rushing down the slope of a mountain, they called on him 
with threats to stop, and fired on him as he continued his 
course. His horse at this moment, terrified by the dis- 
charge of the musket, became unmanageable, and he was 
flung heavily to the ground. AVhile thus prostrate he was 
again fired at, but fortunately without effect. Regaining 
his feet, he succeeded in recovering his horse, and springing 
upon its back, he was speedily beyond the reach of the 
banditti, who pursued and fired at him as he fled. 

Some time subsequently one of the Crelaghs was con- 
victed of horse-stealing at Tralee. Leaning on the bar, he 
heard the sentence of death with a degree of savage apathy 
which astonished every spectator in the court. '■' Is it 
listening to his lordship you are, you stupid gouieril ? " 
exclaimed a bystander, with unfeigned amazement. " Don't 
you see it's listening I am?" replied the prisoner angrily; 
" but fot do I care fot he says. Is not Colonel Blenner- 
hasset looking at me — isn't he — all the time? and he says 
nothing." The prisoner, doubtless, relied on the presents 
which he had given the colonel for an entire immunity 
from the penalty of crime. 4 Even the judges of that day 



4 Kerry cows were the victims of Kerry i'euds from an early period, 
but especially during the Desmond war. The following extract from oui 





were not all exempted from the weakness of accepting a 
bribe, though, for the credit of the bench, we must hope 
these delinquents were the rare exception. Denis O'Brien, 
a man not noted for obedience to law, had a record at 
Nenagh, and learning that the judge had talked of pur- 
chasing a set of carriage horses, Denis sent him a mag- 
nificent set. The judge graciously accepted the horses, 
praised their points extravagantly, and then, charging the 
jury in favour of Denis, obtained a verdict for him. The 
moment Denis gained his point, he sent in a bill to the 
judge for the full value of the horses. His lordship called 
Denis aside to expostulate privately with him. " Oh ! Mr 

" History of Kerry," recently published, will show how justice was 
administered : — 

" The judges went circuit twice a year, except in the county Kerry, 
but whether the county was exempted from judicial visits on account 
of the general propriety of the inhabitants, or because of its remoteness 
and inaccessibleness, is by no means evident. Justice was administered 
with tolerable impartiality, for, amongst the earliest Kerry records we 
can find of the seventeenth century, Sir Thomas Denny was lined .£300, 
and bound 'to good behaviour' for seven years towards John Darroe : his 
bails were John Fitzmaurice and Rev. Barry Denny ; and at the same 
assizes Matthew Boarman and Daniel Sullivan were indicted, for that 
they, 19th December, in the nineteenth year of his Majesty, at Tralee, 
did assault, beat, batter, and whip John Darran. Summer assizes were 
then held, and in the same year David Sullivan was released from cus- 
tody, wherein he had been detained since the summer assizes of 1740, 
for non-payment of a fine of £15, to which he had been sentenced for 
stealing a deer from the park of the Knight of Kerry. In 1777 a num- 
ber of persons were sentenced, and a man was actually condemned to be 
hanged for stealing ' one Caroline hat, value 10s., and one wigg, value 
6s. sterling.'" 





A SCOTCH BALLAD. 



O'Brien," said he, " I did not think you meant to charge 
me for those horses. Come now, my dear friend, why 
should I pay you for them?" — "Upon my word, that is 
curious talk," retorted Denis, in a tone of fierce defiance, 
" I 'd like to know why your lordship should not pay me 
for them ? " To this inquiry, of course, a reply was im- 
possible. The judge was obliged to hold his peace and pay 
the money. 

While enjoying the amusements of the county town, with 
keen eye seeing and sharp ear hearing what perhaps was 
scarcely noticed by others, O'Connell listened to a ballad 
which made an indelible impression on his memory. He 
related the circumstance thus to Mr O'Neill Daunt many 
years afterwards — 

" I liked ballads above all things when I was a boy," said 
O'Connell. "In 17S7 I was brought to the Tralee assizes. 
Assizes were then a great mart for all sorts of amusements — and 
I was greatly taken with the ballad-singers. It was then I heard 
two ballad-singers, a man and a woman, chanting out a ballad, 
which contained a verse I still remember : 

' I leaned my back against an oak, 
I thought it was a trusty tree, 
But first it bent, and then it broke — 
'Twas thus my love deserted me.' * 

He sang the first two lines — she sang the third bne, both together 
sang the fourth, and so on through the whole ballad." 



i This is a verse from the well-known Scotch ballad : — 



" Oh waly, waly up the bank, 

And waly, waly donn the brae." 



§ 



O'CONNELL IN HIS BOYHOOD. 




O'Connell spent much of his time, even at this early 
period of his life, in study. When his playmates were en- 
gaged in noisy games, he would sit apart ahsorhed in some 
hook; and books were rare enough then to he dearly prized. 
The "Voyages of Captain Cook" specially interested him, and 
he would sit for hours poring over the volume, or finding 
out the places on the map. He had also a great fancy for 
the Dublin Magazine, which was taken in by his uncle. 
This serial contained portraits of distinguished personages, 
with their biographies, and even then some vision of and 
aspiration for future fame must have entered his mind, for 
he used to say to himself, " I wonder will my portrait ever 
appear in this." Yet, even in his wildest dreams, how 
little could he have anticipated his magnificent future. 6 

On one occasion when the family were eagerly discuss- 
ing the topics of the day, and the respective merits of Burke 
and Grattan, O'Connell, then only a lad of nine years of 
age, was observed sitting in an arm-chair, silent and 

6 Speaking of his own early recollections, O'Connell said : " My uncle 
used to get the Dublin Magazine at Carhen ; it usually contained the 
portrait of some remarkable person, with a biographical notice. I was 
always an ambitious fellow, and I often used to say to myself, ' I wonder 
will my visage ever appear in the Dublin Magazine,.' I knew at that 
time of no greater notoriety. In 1810, when walking through the streets 
soon after some meeting at which I had attracted public notice, I saw a 
magazine in a shop-window, containing the portrait of ' Councillor 
O'Connell,' and I said to myself with a smile, ' Here are my boyish 
dreams of glory realised.' Though I need not tell you that in 1810, I 
had long outgrown that species of ambition." — Personal Recollection!, 
vol. i. p. 102. 



ran 



m 






>% 



abstracted. He was asked by a lady, who wondered at 
his silence, "What he was thinking of?" His reply was 
characteristic — 

" I'll make a stir in the world yet!" 

Father 0' Grady was then the chaplain of the O'Connell 
family, and prepared the boy for the Sacraments. A curious 
anecdote is told of this ecclesiastic. He resided at Lou- 
vain during the wars of Marlborough, and from the 
troubled state of Flanders, he was reduced to the deepest 
distress. He begged his way to the coast, hoping to meet 
some vessel whose captain might take him for charity to 
Ireland. As he was trudging slowly and painfully along, 
he suddenly fell in with a band of robbers. One of the 
robbers was a Kerryman, named Denis Mahony, who, 
moved to compassion by the penniless poverty of the priest, 
and charmed with the sound of his native tongue, gave 
him out of his own share of plunder the means of returning 
to Ireland. " God be merciful to poor Denis Mahony ! " 
Father 0' Grady was accustomed to say, when relating this 
adventure; "I found him a useful friend in need. But 
for all that he might prove a very disagreeable neigh- 
bour." 

The Liberator in after years accounted for the appear- 
ance of a native of Kerry among a gang of Flemish rob- 
bers, by supposing that he had served in Marlborough's 
army, and, deserting from ill-treatment, sought subsist- 
ence on the highway as a footpad. 



m 



ACQUITTAL OF A POPISH PRIEST. 



But poor Father O'Grady only escaped from the perils of 
starvation and the sea to run the risk of hanging or 
imprisonment at home. He was seized on his return to 
Ireland, and tried on the charge of being a " Popish 
priest." A witness mounted the table and swore he had 
heard him " say" Mass. 

" Pray, sir," said the judge, " how do you know he said 
Mass ?" 

" I heard him say it, my lord," replied the witness. 

" Did he say it in Latin?" inquired his lordship. 

" Yes, my lord." 

" Then you understand Latin ? " 

" A little." 

" What words did you hear him use?" 

" Ave Maria." 

11 That is part of the Lord's Prayer ; is it not?" 

u Yes, my lord," was the fellow's answer. 

" Here is a pretty witness to convict the prisoner," cried 
the judge ; "he swears that Ave Maria is Latin for the 
Lord's Prayer." As the judge pronounced a favourable 
charge, the jury acquitted Father O'Grady. 7 

O'Connell was sent to school in Cork by his uncle 
Maurice at the age of thirteen. This school was the first 
establishment of the kind which had been opened in Ire- 




^ 



' An English Protestant writer says : " For many a long year, Irish 
history is but a melancholy recital of religious intolerance and party 
vimlictiveness." — Ireland tauter British Bale, by Lieut -Colonel Jervis 




OCONNELL A BOY. 



land since the Protestant Reformation. Mr Fagin, in his 
Memoir of O'Connell, says that he did not exhibit any 
extraordinary intellect at this period ; and as his own 
father was a school-companion of the Liberator, he had 
good opportunity for correct information. 8 

O'Connell, however, considered himself to have been a 
quick child, and as he was not remarkable for modesty, he 
had no hesitation in saying so. On one occasion, when 
travelling with Mr Daunt, he made this assertion : " I 
was, in childhood, remarkably quick and persevering. My 



I 



R.A., M.P., London, 1868, p. 208. Again, he says : " The following re- 
wards were fixed for the discovery of Popish clergy and schoolmasters — 

" For an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general, or any other person 

exercising any foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction, . . ,£50 
For each clergyman, and each secular clergyman, not regis- 
tered according to 2 Anne, c. vii 20 

For a schoolmaster or usher, 10 

— Anne, c. iii., Irish Statutes. 

He adds : " To limit the power of a Papist to take leases for more 
than thirty-one years made him care but little for investing in land 
till death gave him ' a Protestant lease of the sod.' To forbid the 
education of Popish children by Papists, either abroad or at home, 
secured their continuing or remaining in happy ignorance," p. 215. 

8 " Daniel O'Connell was early sent by his uncle, Maurice, by whom 
he was adopted, to Mr Harrington's school, in the great island of Cove, 
near Cork. The father of the writer was a school-fellow of his, and we 
have often heard him say, that O'Connell did not display any extraordi- 
nary precocity of intellect. He was, like Swift and Sheridan, and a 
thousand others who afterwards rose to eminence, but an ordinary 
scholar." — Fagin's Life of O'Connell. 

This work was reprinted from the very type used for its original 
destination — a newspaper. 



fi 



childish propensity to idleness was overcome hy the fear of 
disgrace : I desired to excel, and could not brook the idea 
of being inferior to others. One day I was idle, and my 
teacher finding me imperfect in my lesson, threatened to 
beat me. Bat I shrank from the indignity, exclaiming, — 
' Oh, don't beat me for one half hour ! If I haven't my 
lesson by that time, beat me then ! ' The teacher granted 
me the reprieve, and the lesson, rather a difficult one, was 
thoroughly learned." 

On another occasion O'Connell said to me, " I was the 
only boy who wasn't beaten at Harrington's school ; I owed 
this to my attention." 

In 1791 Maurice O'Connell sent the two brothers to 
Flanders, intending that they should enter the famous 
Jesuit college at Liege. They sailed from Ireland in a brig 
bound for London. The captain undertook to land them 
at Dover, whence they were to take the packet to Ostend. 

The tide not serving when they arrived at their destina- 
tion, they were landed in boats, and Mr O'Connell's first 
acquaintance with the English shore was made as he 
stumbled on the beach after a thorough submersion from 
a capsized boat. 

An opportunity offering in a few days, the party pro- 
ceeded to Ostend, and thence by diligence to Liege, where, 
however, a disappointment awaited them. Mr O'Connell 
was found to have passed the age when boys could be 
admitted as students, and they had to retrace their steps 



0' CON NELL AT DO CAT. 



s 



as far as Louvain, there to await new instructions from 
home. 

The difference of disposition between the two boys was 
here strikingly shown : Maurice, the younger, naturally 
enough, availed himself of his six weeks' unexpected holi- 
days (the interchange of communications between their then 
abiding-place and the remote shores of Kerry, requiring 
that interval), to indulge in all a boy's vacation amuse- 
ments ; while, on the other hand, his brother, feeling no 
relish for idleness, attended class in one of the halls at 
Louvain as a volunteer, and with such assiduity, that ere 
the arrival of letters from home, for which they were wait- 
ing, he had risen to a high place in a class of one hundred 
and twenty boys. 

Their uncle's new orders were, that they should go to St 
Omers ; whither, accordingly, they proceeded, and remained 
a year — viz., from early in the year 1791, till a similar 
period of 1792 — when they were removed to the English 
college of Douay for some months. 9 

An anecdote is told of O'Counell's journey, which shows, 
were it needed to show it, how deeply the minds of Irish 
youth were impregnated with hatred for England, or rather 
with hatred for English rule. It would be well if those who 
object to such manifestations of feeling would, for one 
moment, put themselves in the place of these expatriated 



* Memoir of O'Coiinell, by his son, vol. L p. 7. 



boys, and ask themselves how they would have felt and 
acted had Ireland been master of England, and had Irish 
law-makers compelled the scions of England's most ancient 
houses to seek education in foreign lands, because it was 
not only denied, but even prohibited, under the most 
terrible penalties, in their own country. If such considera- 
tions were made honestly, we think Englishmen would 
lose nothing, and might gain a great deal. There is no 
possible advantage to be gained from wilful blindness to 
facts. We have heard of somewhat similar instances in 
the present day. 

As the O'Connells travelled in the diligence, a young 
Frenchman discovered, or supposed he had discovered, 
their nationality. He immediately commenced pouring out 
the most violent tirades against England. O'Connell 
seemed perfectly satisfied ; and the Frenchman, astonished 
at his apathy, after talking a long time, lost patience with 
the young traveller. 

" Do you hear? Do you understand what I am saying, 
sir?" 

" Yes, I hear you — I comprehend you perfectly." 

" And yet you are not angry?" 

" Not in the least." 

" How can you so tamely bear the censures I pronounce 
against your country ? " 

" Sir, England is not my country. Censure her as much 
as you please — you cannot offend me. I am an Irishman, 



THE KERRY PEASANTRY. 



and my countrymen have as little reason to love England 
as yours ; perhaps less." 

There is ample evidence that O'Connell distinguished 
himself at St Omers. He took the first place there in 
every class, probably owing to his proficiency in classical 
learning. The natives of Munster, and it is well known of 
Kerry and Cork in particular, were often found with Latin 
primers in their possession, and even with some fair know- 
ledge of that language, at the very time that education was 
most sternly prohibited. 1 



1 An attendant of Rinuccini, who visited Ireland as Papal Legate, in 
October 1645, has left some very interesting details on this subject in 
a MS. addressed to Count Thomas Rinuccini, but the writer is supposed 
to have been the Dean of Fermo. He gives a graphic description of 
their arrival at Kenmare — "al porto di Kilmar" — and of the warm 
reception they met from the poor, and their courtesy — " La cortesia di 
quei poveri popoli dove Monsignor capitd, fu incomparabile." He also 
says : " Gran cosa, nelle montagne e luoghi rozzi, e gente povero per le 
devastazioni fatte dei nemici eretici, trovai perd la nobilta della S. fede 
Catolica, giache auro vi fu uomo, o donna, o ragazzo, ancor che piccolo 
che non me sapesse recitar il Pater, Ave, Credo, e i commandamenti, 
della Santa Cliiesa." " It is most wonderful that in this wild and 
mountainous place, and a people so impoverished by the heretical 
enemy, I found, nevertheless, the noble influence of the holy Catholic 
faith ; for there was not a man or woman, or a child however young, 
who could not repeat the Our Father, Hail Mary, Creed, and the com- 
mands of Holy Church." "We believe the same might be said at the 
present day of this part of Ireland. It is still as poor, and the people 
are still as well instructed in and as devoted to their faith now as in 
that century. 

A work was published in Florence, in 1844, entitled " Nunziatura in 
Irlanda," di Gio. Battista Rinuccini. This work, which throws great 
light upon the history of the period, contains a part of the Rinuccini 

D 



IMAGINARY "HAPPY IGNORANCE." 



It is true, indeed, that an English Protestant writer has 
recently asserted that the prohihition of education in Ire- 
land resulted either in the conformity of individuals to 
the state religion or in " happy ignorance." But this 
assertion, like many another made by those who are utterly 
ignorant, though, perhaps, not always wilfully so, of the 
subject on which they write, is simply false. The instances 
of " conformity " are indeed rare, and few have been so bold 
as to assert that these "conformities" were conversions. 
The " happy ignorance " is imaginary. If all who were 
educated in Catholic continental colleges did not exhibit 
as brilliant manifestations of intellect as O'Connell, it was 
not because their education was defective, but because 
intellectual gifts are not equally distributed. 

Maurice O'Connell must have been an educated man 
himself, or he would scarcely have been so desirous of pro- 
curing educational advantages for his nephews. He was 
by no means content with sending them to college, at 
considerable expense; while they pursued their academic 
career, he took care to inform himself of their progress ; 
and the following letter to him from the Rev. Dr Stapylton, 
the President of St Omers, is alike creditable to the boys 



MS. This volume also contains, in the original Italian, the report 
presented by Rinuccini to the Pope on his return from Ireland. Burke 
has given some extracts from the MS. in his " Hibernia Dominicana," 
and Carte mentions it also ; but otherwise these very important docu- 
ments appear to have been quite overlooked. 



EARLY PROMISE. 



and to their self-appointed guardian. It is dated January 
1792:— 

" You desire to have my candid opinion respecting your 
nephews ; and you very properly remark, that no habit can be 
worse than that the instructors of youth who seek to gratify the 
parents of those under their care, by ascribing to them talents and 
qualities which they do not really possess. You add, that, being 
only the. uncle of these young men, you can afford to hear the real 
truth respecting their abilities or deficiencies. It is not my habit 
to disguise the precise truth, in reply to such inquiries as yours. 
You shall, therefore, have my opinion with perfect candour. 

" I begin with the younger — Maurice. His manner and de- 
meanour are quite satisfactory. He is gentlemanly in his conduct; 
and much loved by his fellow-students. He is not deficient in 
abilities ; but he is idle, and fond of amusement. I do not think 
he will answer for any laborious profession ; but I will answer for 
it, that he never will be guilty of anything discreditable. At 
least, such is my firm belief. 

" With respect to the elder, Daniel, I have but one sentence to 
■write about him, and that is, that I never was so much mistaken 
in my life as I shall be, unless he be destined to make a remark- 
able figure in society." 

" It is needless to say," observes Mr John O'Connell, " that 
the times were as perilous for strangers, as for natives, especially 
Englhh strangers ; under which designation the unhappy con- 
tinental custom (now at last beginning to be altered), of classing 
natives of Ireland abroad, caused Mr 0"Connell and his brother 
to be included. They had to remain, however, at Douay, during 
several weeks of the Reign of Terror, not being able to follow the 
example of other students in going home, owing to the interruption 
and delay of communications from Ireland. During this later 
period the boys were several times insulted by the soldiery that 
passed through Douay, on their way to and from the seat of war 
on the northern frontier. On an eminence just outside the town 



are the traces of a Eoman camp, attributed to Caesar ; and here 
thirty-six thousand troops, the great majority raw boys, were for 
some time encamped, rendering residence at Douay still more 
dangerous and disagreeable. ' Little aristocrats,' ' young priests,' 
&c, were the mildest terms in which the unbridled soldiery saluted 
the boys wherever they met ; and, on one occasion, the soldiers, 
as they were marched through the town, heaped the fiercest 
execrations and insults upon them." 



O'Neill Daunt says, — " The Bishop of Ardagh told me 
that a French captain of artillery said to him. shortly after 
the trois jours de Juillet, ' Some of us imagined that your 
O'Connell was born at St Omers. Ah! if he had been a 
native of our country we should have made him king of the 
French.' " 

When we recollect the fate of many French kings, 
whether reigning by legal or popular right, we cannot hut 
observe that O'Connell had a fortunate escape. 

A French statesman has dared to face the scepticism of 
the age, or it might be more correct to say, has anticipated 
it, by writing of " God in History." It is not fashionable to 
attribute much influence to Providence ; hut we do not 
profess or desire to follow the multitude : we would there- 
fore suggest that a most merciful Providence permitted 
O'Counell's residence in France while that unhappy country 
was being purged ih the terrible furnace of self-created 
incendiarism. We cannot doubt that the impression made 
on his mind by what he saw, and still more by what he 
heard, was a powerful restraint on his conduct, in after life 




Note. — After the fall of Napoleon in 1814-15, and the restoration of the 
Bonrbons, in the person of Louis XVIII., that monarch, as so much at- 
tached to the old recollections of his dynasty, was not unmindful of the 
Irish Brigade. Above all, he could not forget how, in 1792, he himself 
conveyed the final expression of the gratitude of his family to the repre- 
sentatives of the three last regiments of the Brigade, or those of Dillon. 
Walsh, and Berwick, with a " drapeau d'adieu," or farewell banner, 
emblematic of their national deserts, and accompanied by these words — 

"Gentlemen, — We acknowledge the inappreciable services that France 
has received from the Irish Brigade, in the course of the last 100 years ; 
services that we shall never forget, though under an impossibility of 
requiting them. Receive this standard, as a pledge of our remembrance, 
a monument of our admiration, and of our respect ; and, in future, 
generous Irishmen, this shall be the motto of your spotless flag — 
' 1692—1792,' 
' Semper et ubique fidelis."' 

The banner for the Brigade represented an Irish harp, and was em- 
broidered with shamrocks and fleurs-de-lis, or lilies. In 1814, the 
officers of the Old Irish Brigade in France requested the Duke of Fitz- 
James to present them to the king ; which request the Duke, after 
thanking them for the honour thereby done him, complied with, in 
these few words, " which are a summary of the Irish character, in all 
its chivalrous sublimity," says my French authority — 

"Sire, — I have the honour of presenting to your Majesty the sur- 
vivors of the Old Irish Brigade. These gentlemen only ask for a sword, 
and the privilege of dying at the foot of the throne." 

Louis, however, was too deeply indebted to England for the recovery of 
his crown, to do anything directly opposed to the wishes of her govern- 
ment, and it particularly pressed upon him, through Lord Castlereagh, that 
there should be no restoration of an Irish Brigade in France. " This 
fact is certain," alleges a contemporary in 1814, " and very uncommon 
exertions must have been used to procure this concession from Louis ; 
because, independent of the general claims of this body on the gratitude 
of the French monarchy, one of these regiments had received a promise 



from the present king — that, in the event of his restoration, the regi- 
ment, for its fidelity, should he promoted to the rank of the Guards of 
the King." 

I have now only to conclude with notices of two venerahle survivors, 
for many years, of the gallant corps to which they helonged — the one, an 
officer of equally high rank and merit — the other, the last who died on 
the Continent. 1. Of the former survivor of the old Brigade, who was 
uncle to the celebrated Daniel O'Connell, this memoir from a member 
of the family, is given, with some slight alterations and compression : — 
" General Daniel Count O'Connell, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of 
the Holy Ghost, and Colonel of the late 6th Regiment of the Irish 
Brigade in the British service, entered the French army at the age of 
14, in the year 1757, as second Lieutenant in the Regiment of the Irish 
Brigade, sommanded by, and called after, the Earl of Clare. He was 
the youngest of twenty-two children, of one marriage, and was born in 
August 1473, at Darrynane, in the County of Kerry, the residence of his 
father, Daniel O'Connell. His education had, at that early period, been 
confined to a thorough knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages — a 
knowledge which he preserved to the latest period of his life — and to a 
familiar acquaintance with the elements of the mathematics. He served 
his first campaign during the Seven Years' War in Germany, and became 
respected by his superior officers, from his strict attention to all his 
military duties, and beloved by all his companions, from the unaffected 
grace, gaiety, and generosity of his disposition. At the conclusion of the 
war, instead of devoting the hours of peace to idleness or pleasure, he 
dedicated them, with the closest attention, to the study of literature 
generally, but especially to that of the branches of military engineering. 
He was attached to the Corps du Genie in its early formation, and soon 
became known to be one of the most scientific of the military engineers 
of France. He distinguished himself at the siege and capture of Port 
Mahon, in Minorca, from the English, in the year 1779, being at that 
time Major in the Regiment of Royal Swedes. He received public 
thanks for his services on that occasion, and a recommendation, from 
the Commander-in-Chief to the Minister of War, for promotion. That 
promotion he immediately obtained, and served at the siege of Gibraltar 
in the year 1782, as Lieutenant-Colonel of his Regiment, the Royal 
Swedes, but attached to the corps of engineers. Everybody remembers 
the attack made by the floating batteries on Gibraltar on the 13th 






September 1782, and the glorious and triumphant resistance of the 
English garrison, under General Elliott. Lieutenant-Colonel O'Connell 
was one of the three engineers to whose judgment the plan of attack was 
submitted, a few days before it was carried into effect. He gave it, as 
his decided opinion, that the plan would not be successful. The other 
two engineers were of a contrary opinion, and the attack took place 
accordingly. The event justified his judgment. Upon a point of 
honour recognised in the French army, he claimed a right to share the 
perils of an attack, which was resolved upon against his opinion. When 
the attempt to storm Gibraltar was resolved on, it became necessary to 
procure a considerable number of marines, to act on board the floating 
batteries. For this purpose, the French infantry was drawn up, and 
being informed of the urgency of the occasion, a call was made for volun- 
teers, amongst the rest, of course, from the Royal Swedes. Lieutmant- 
Colonel O'Connell's regiment was paraded, and the men having been 
informed that he was to be employed on the service, the battalion stepped 
forward to one man, declaring their intention to follow their Lieutenant- 
Colonel. It so happened that the senior Lieutenant-Colonel, the Count 
De Ferzen, then well known as ' le beau Ferzen,' and towards whom 
it was more than suspected that Marie Antoinette entertained feelings of 
peculiar preference, had arrived from Paris, but a short time before, to 
join the regiment, which since his appointment he had scarcely seen. 
Attributing the enthusiasm of the men to his appearance, he rode up, 
and assured them, that he would be proud to lead them. A murmur of 
disappointment passed along the line ; and, at length, some of the older 
soldiers ventured to declare, that it was not with him they volunteered, 
but with the other Lieutenant-Colonel, who had always commanded, and 
always protected them. With a generosity which does him honour, 
Ferzen immediately declared, that he would not attempt to deprive 
Colonel O'Connell of the honour he so well deserved ; but that, in making 
way for him, he would say, that he hoped, when the regiment knew so 
much of him, they would be equally ready to follow him. Colonel 
O'Connell was named second in command of one of the floating batteries, 
and this battery was among the first to come into action. He had, in the 
early part of the fight, a portion of his ear taken off by a ball ; about the 
period when the batteries began to take fire, a shell from the English 
mortars burst close to his feet, and severely wounded him in no less 
than nine places. Although almost covered with wounds, his recovery 



m 



was not slow, and, being placed high on the list of those recommended 
for promotion, he was, in the ensuing year, appointed Colonel comman- 
dant of a German regiment of two battalions of 1000 men each, then in 
the French service, but belonging to the Prince of Saku-Salm. The 
regiment, when Colonel O'Connell got the command, was in the most 
lamentable state of disorganisation and indiscipline ; and it was an- 
nounced to him, by the French Minister of War, that one reason for 
giving him that regiment was the expectation, that he would remedy all 
its disorders. Nor was that expectation disappointed. There was, in 
1787, a grand review of upwards of 50,000 French infantry in Alsace, 
and it was admitted, that the Regiment of Salm-Salm was the regiment 
in the highest state of discipline in the whole camp, and its Colonel re- 
ceived public thanks on that account. He was soon after appointed to 
the high and responsible office of Inspector-General of all the French 
Infantry, and he attained also the rank of General Officer. In this 
capacity he was intrusted with the organisation of the general code 
of military discipline, especially as relating to the interior regimental 
arrangements ; and as his suggestions and book of regulations were 
adopted into the French armies after the Revolution, and imitated by 
other nations, the advantages derived from them are still felt by every 
ariiiv in Europe. We have thus traced his career from his entrance in 
the French service as a second Lieutenant. From that rank, unaided by 
any interest, without a patron, or a friend, save those he attached to 
himself by his virtues, he rose to the command of a splendid regiment, 
and to a rank but little below the highest in the service of France ; and 
he attained that station, at a time when the bigotry of the Penal Code 
precluded him from holding the most insignificant commission in the 
British army. Still more brilliant prospects lay before him ; but the 
French Revolution, overturning thrones and altars, obliterated from the 
recollection the fate of private individuals, in the absorbing nature of 
national interests which that mighty movement involved. He was, it 
may be well said, stripped of his fame and fortunes by that Revolution; 
but he might have retained both if he could sacrifice his principles, 
because both Dumoivrier and Carnot pressed him, more than once, to 
accept the command of one of the revolutionary armies. He totally 
declined any such command, feeling it a duty to remain near the person 
of Louis XVI., and to share, as he did, some of his greatest perils in the 
days of tumult and anarchy, until that ill-fated, but well-meaning. 



> - 1 



monarch was hurled from his throne, and cast into prison. Unable any 
longer to serve the Bourbon cause in France, General O'Connell joined 
the French Princes at Coblentz, and made the disastrous campaign of 
1792, under the Duke of Brunswick, as Colonel of the Hussars de 
Berchiny. In 1793, General O'Connell was, on his return to his family 
in Kerry, detained in London, with other French officers, by the British 
Government, to lay and digest plans for the restoration of the Bourbon 
family. Upon this occasion, he sent in a plan for the campaign of 1794, 
which attracted so much attention, that Mr Pitt desired an interview, 
and received with thanks many elucidations of the plan." Soon after, 
the Ministry, having determined to form an Irish Brigade of six regi- 
ments in the British service, " this determination was carried into effect, 
and niie of those regiments was placed under the command of General 
O'Connell. It was stipulated that the Colonels should not be raised to 
the rank of Generals in the British service, but should receive full pay 
for life." General O'Connell, during the peace of 1802, returned to 
Frame, to look after a large property, to which his lady was entitled ; 
he became a victim of the seizure of British subjects by the then First 
Consul ; and remained a prisoner in France until the downfall of 
Napoleon, and the restoration of the Bourbons. That event restored 
him to his military rank in France ; and he enjoyed, in the decline of 
life, amidst the affectionate respect of his relations and friends, the 
advantage of full pay, as General in the service of France, and Colonel 
in the service of Great Britain— an advantage which circumstances can, 
perhaps, never again produce for any man ; but which he enjoyed with 
the full knowledge and approbation of both powers. During the peace 
of 1814, General O'Connell met Marshal Ney at dinner, at the house of 
one of the then Ministry. A good deal of conversation passed between 
them, and at length Ney stated, that he had known General O'Connell 
before the Revolution, and mentioned in particular having frequently 
seen him in the year 1787. " My memory," replied the General, " is 
particularly good ; I have seen few officers whom I do not recollect, and 
I do not think I could have seen a person so likely to be remarkable as 
Marshal Ney, without recollecting him." " General," returned Ney, 
" you could not have remarked me ; you then commanded the regiment 
of Salm-Salm ; I was a corporal of hussars ; our Colonel and you were 
fast friends, and frequently exchanged guards ; and I have often, as 
corporal, posted and relieved the hussar sentinel on your tent, while one 



Hi 



of your corporals was going through the same duty at ray Colonel's." 
The Revolution of 1830 deprived him, however, of his pay as French 
General. He refused to take the oath of fidelity to Louis Philippe, and 
was, of course, destituted. He retired to the country seat of his son-in- 
law, at Madon, near Blois — a beauteous spot on the Loire, which he 
had himself ornamented in the most exquisite style of English planting 
— and there, in his declining health, he waited with resignation the call 
of his God, which occurred on the 9th of July, 1833, he having then 
nearly completed his 90th year, and being the oldest Colonel in the 
English service. " He had never, in the season of his prosperity, for- 
gotten his country, or his God. Loving that country, with the strongest 
affection, he retained, to the last, the full use of her native language ; 
and, although master of the Spanish, Italian, German, Greek, and Latin, 
as well as French and English languages, it was, to him, a source of the 
greatest delight, to find any person capable of conversing with him in 
the pure Gaelic of his native mountains. There never lived a more 
sincere friend — a more generous man. His charities were multiplied 
and continuous ; and it was the surprise of all who knew him, how he 
could afford to do all the good he did to his kind. He was, all his life, 
a practical Catholic, and had the comfort of dying, without a pang, 
amidst all the sacred and sweet consolations of that religion, which he 
had not forgotten in his youth, and which did not abandon him in the 
days of darkness and death. — Requiescat in pace" 




ever, would have been considered simply as unjustifiable 
reprisals for atrocities wliich cannot be denied, and which 
cannot be excused, had the perpetrators not been Irish. The 
French Revolution was a revolt against all authority ; the 
Irish Rebellion was the cry of the oppressed against the op- 
pressor, the cry of the enslaved for freedom, the effort which 
must be made sooner or later, with failure or with success, 
as God wills, for those who have suffered long and unjustly. 

In France, the first assembling of the tiers etat looked 
like a pledge of national restoration and national freedom; 
but France had no definite aim, though, in truth, its wants 
were many, and France had no master mind to explain or 
rather to comprehend its needs. Mirabeau, indeed, had 
foretold its future with the prophetic utterance of keen 
worldly wisdom and acute self-interest : " There is but 
one step from the Capitol to the Tarpeiau Itock." It was 
true. But unhappily the few who strove to find a place 
in its Capitol also sought to govern, and failing, were 
dashed to ruin down the steep precipice of popular odium ; 
there were thousands who never sought to rule, who only 
desired to be ruled justly, and yet, for them also, the end 
was death and agony. 

If the leaders of the French Revolution steeped their 
unhappy country and their own souls in crime and misery, 
they were, at least, men with a policy, with a policy of 
cruelty like Robespierre, with a policy of selfishness like 
Dan ton ; but in Ireland there was not a single man with a 



policy. Yet the leaders of Irish revolt were undonhtedly 
men who sacrificed their own interests to the popular cause. 

There were exceptions, but they were exceptions, and 
only proved the rule. In all revolutions there never was 
a knight, so pure and without reproach, so single-minded 
in his purpose, so disinterested in his efforts, as the 
young scion of the lordly house of Fitzgerald, the young 
noble, sans peur et sans reproche, the victim of the traitor, 
who died, loving, not wisely, but all too well the unhappy 
laud to which he belonged by right of consignment rather 
than by right of nativity. 

The only strict parallel between the state of France 
and the state of Ireland at the close of the last century can 
be found in the condition of the people. The leaders of the 
French Revolution would not have succeeded unless they 
had been supported by the people. We are far from de- 
siring to maintain the vox populi vox Dei principle. The 
voice of the people is not always divine, but the voice of 
the people should at least meet with a patient hearing from 
those who govern the people. 

If the voice of the people had been heard either in France 
or in Ireland, or rather if the voice of the people had been 
listened to patiently, and if men who professed themselves 
able to guide and govern the people had taken some little 
pains to understand that voice, a bloody chapter of Euro- 
pean history might have remained unwritten. 

In France, a certain stereotyped nobility was neces- 



WITHOUT A KINO. 




sary for personal or professional advancement. In 
that advancement depended on the profession of i 
religious belief. The results were almost the same 

In France, the peasantry were sold like cattle 
soil ; in Ireland, they were legally transferred. 

In France, the old ties of feudal affection, if such affec- 
tion had ever existed, which we very much doubt, were 
shattered by ever increasing exactions ; in Ireland, where 
such affection had existed, it was weakened past recal by 
indifference and tyrannical bondage of opinion. 

In Ireland, the people knew no king. The king of Eng- 
land was indeed nominally their monarch, but he was not 
the monarch of their affections. He was the grim, stern, 
and alas ! vindictive lawgiver. He was the power from 
whence emanated the decrees of life and death ; from whom 
they were compelled to receive a religion of which they 
knew nothing, except that it was not the religion of their 
fathers, and laws which seemed to have been passed only 
that they might live to provide abundance for their legis- 
lators while they themselves were starving." 

2 Again, I would give English opinion on the subject of English 
policy. No Irish writer has ever spoken half as severely on this 
subject as an English statesman. In 1793, Charles James Fox 
writes thus of English foreign policy : " Our conduct to them [the 
Americans] as well as to the Danes, Swedes, Duke of Tuscany, and 
others who wished to be neutral, has been insufferable, both for arro- 
gance and injustice." — Memorial and Correspondence of Charles James 
Fox, vol. iii., p. 47. 

"For many a long year, the history of Ireland is but a melancholy 




If Louis the Fourteenth of France alienated the affec- 
tions of his people by his indifference, George the Third 
of England was practically unknown to his Irish subjects. 
Yet terrible as were the wrongs of Ireland, and oppressed 
as they were by years of injustice, we believe few will 
say that the most exasperated Irish rebel would have 
imbrued his hands in the blood of his king. 

There was indeed one part of France which was exempted 
from the crimes, though not from the sufferings of the 
Revolution. A brief glance at the causes which exempted 
it may be useful to our future ; and it is surely instructive. 
The luxuries of the capital had not penetrated into the 
Vendean provinces, and, what was almost the inevitable 



recital of religious intolerance and party vindictiveness. William 
sanctioned the outlawry of three thousand nine hundred and twenty 
followers of King James in Ireland, at a time when but fifty-four 
people in England suffered for the same offence ; and, taking advantage 
of the consequent forfeitures of land, which amounted to 1,060,792 
acres, he lavishly distributed them amongst his immediate friends. This 
act was too gross not to attract attention ; and the English Parliament, 
in 1699, appointed commissioners to inquire into the matter. The 
following year, they reported to the House that Elizabeth Villiers, 
Countess of Orkney, had obtained 97,649 acres ; Keppel, created Lord 
Albemarle, 108,000 ; Ginckle, Baron of Aughrim and Earl of Athlone, 
28,480 ; Henri de Massue, Marquis de Rouvigny, created Earl of Gal- 
way, 36,148 acres ; Bentinck, Earl of Portland and Lord Woodstock, 
] 35,000. In consequence of this report a Bill of Assumption was intro- 
duced into the English Parliament, and passed, much to the discomfiture 
of William ; and it is worthy of observation that a clause was inserted 
in this Act especially protecting such of the Irish as had re-obtained 
estates in accordance with the treaty of Limerick, although it was stated 
by the commissioners that many of these restitutions had been corruptly 



consequence, the relationships between the governed and 
the governing classes were based on principles of justice. 
The proprietors were resident. " They were constantly 
engaged in connections either of mutual interest, or of 
kindly feeling with those who cultivated their lands." 
They sympathised with the people when they wept, they 
rejoiced with them when they rejoiced. Thus, when the 
peasantry elsewhere in France rose up against their land- 
lords, those of La Vendee died in defending theirs. 

In Ireland in the far south, in the yet farther west, there 
were a few such landlords, and as a necessary consequence 
a few such faithful followers ; but for them the antagonism 
was bitter, and the result misery to both oppressor and 
oppressed. 



procured. The Irish Parliament, however, was not so impartial. 
Taking advantage of the dispirited condition of the Kornan Catholics, it 
enacted statutes against them from time to time, as insulting as they 
were oppressive. Any lands, tenements, or hereditaments, of which any 
Protestant was, or should he, seized in fee-simple, absolute, or fee-tail, 
which by the death of such Protestant or his wife ought to have 
descended to his son, or other issue in tail, being Papists, were to 
descend to the nearest Protestant relation, as if the Popish heir and 
other Popish relatives were dead. The small remnant of the Roman 
Catholic gentry mustered courage enough to demand to be heard by 
counsel against the provisions of the Act, which privilege being granted 
to them, we find the curious picture of Papist counsel quoting Scripture 
and the right of common law at the bar of a Protestant Parliament, to 
urge upon it the necessity of observing solemn treaties, and of not pass- 
ing enactments which would have disgraced a pagan state." — Ireland 
wider British Rule. By Lieut.-Col. Jervis, RuA., M.P. London, 1868. 
pp. 210-215. 





sS«J§»2 



A DISTINCTION WITH A DIFFERENCE. 



67 



It was an axiom of Sully's that the people never revolt 
from fickleness or the mere desire of change. One of the 
most eminent of English historians has approved this 
maxim, but with a necessary qualification, 8 and he might 
have added that the intensity of the result would be gene- 
rally proportional to the intensity of the cause. 

Burke described the state of France as " perfectly simple." 
" It consists," he said, " of but two classes, the oppressors 
and the oppressed; and if the oppressed became in turn the 
most cruel of oppressors, it was because the first oppressors 
had made the priests and the people formally abjure the Divi- 
nity, and had estranged them from every civil, moral, and 
social, or even natural and instinctive sentiment, habit, and 
practice, and had rendered them systematically savages." 

It was principally this formal " abjuration of the Divinity" 
which made the most striking difference between the con- 
duct of the French and Irish revolutionists, and it is not 
a little remarkable, that the men who were most earnest in 
their efforts to procure French assistance for Ireland, were, 
I will not say Protestants, though they were nominally 
such, but rather infidels. 

When Daniel and Maurice O'Cbnnell sailed from France, 



Subsequent events have not falsified the maxim of Sully, though 
they have shown that it requires modification. The observation, more- 
over is true only in reference to the circumstances of revolutionary 
troubles. The people over a whole country never pass from a state of 
quiescence to one of trouble without the experience of practical griev- 
ances. —Alison's History of Europe, vol. i. p. 63. 



*« •<*,%. «£,« 



the two Sheares were their fellow-travellers. It was the 
same packet-boat which brought over the intelligence that 
the unfortunate Louis had died like a king, if he had not 
lived 4 like one. 

The murder of the king was necessarily the one subject of 
conversation. The Sheares were communicative. They had 
been in Paris at the time, and they loudly proclaimed their 
approval of the popular fury. An English gentleman con- 
tinued the subject, and at last, the brothers boasted that they 
had actually been present when the deed of blood was done. 



* Perhaps the one only scene in the life of this unhappy monarch in 
which he showed anything like kingly dignity, was that which occurred 
on the 20th of June 1792. Sansterre and the Marquis de Huen had 
burst into the royal presence at the head of an infuriated mob. The 
men shouted " Ca ira," and amongst other banners of a horrible and 
blasphemous character, they bore one with the words, " The Constitution 
or Death ! " while one demon incarnate carried a bloody calf's heart on 
the point of his pike, with the inscription round it, " The heart of an 
aristocrat." Louis was placed on a chair, which had been raised on a 
table, by a few of his faithful attendants, while the mob raged, howling 
and dancing through the palace. He alone remained unmoved. A 
drunken workman handed him the red cap of liberty, fit emblem of the 
only liberty it allowed — the liberty to die, or blaspheme God. The king 
placed it on his head, and wore it for three hours. Had he hesitated for 
a moment, he would have been stabbed to death. His heroic demean- 
our, when drinking a glass of water, which he had every reason to 
believe had been poisoned, excited the applause even of the friends who 
watched him. When at length a deputation of the Assembly arrived, 
headed by Vergniaud and Isnard, they found the king " unshaken in 
courage, though nearly exhausted by fatigue." One of the National 
Guard approached him to assure him of his devotion. " Feel," he replied, 
laying his hand on his bosom, " whether this is the beating of a heart 
agitated by fear." — Alison, vol. ii. p. .39. 



'LOVE OF THE CAUSE, SIR." 



69 



" Good heavens ! sir," exclaimed their horrified ques- 
tioner, " what could have induced you to witness so horrible 
a spectacle ! " 

" Love of the cause, sir," was the prompt reply ; and, in 
truth, mauy of the patriots who led or aided in the Irish 
Rebellion of 1798, were men like the Sheares, who had no 
personal or relative wrongs to redress, but who were im- 
pregnated with the revolutionary spirit of the day, and 
found in Ireland the field for action which their restless 
spirits desired. 6 



* The Sheares were natives of Cork, whither the younger proceeded 
in May 1798, for the purpose of organising that county. An energetic 
co-operator in this movement was a silversmith named Conway, a native 
of Dublin. The treachery of this man was so artfully concealed, that 
his most intimate friends never suspected him. 

" If those who join secret societies," writes a Cork correspondent, 
" could get a peep at the records of patriotic perfidy kept in the Castle, 
they would get some insight into the dangerous consequences of meddling 
with them. There is a proverbial honour amongst thieves ; there seems 
to be none amongst traitors. The publication of the official correspond- 
ence about the end of the last century made some strange revelations. In 
Cork, there lived a watchmaker, named Conway, one of the directory of 
the United Irishmen there. So public and open a professor of disloyal 
sentiments was he, that on the plates of his watches he had engraved as 
a device a harp without a crown. For a whole generation this man's 
name was preserved as ' a sufferer for his country,' like his ill-fated 
townsmen, John and Henry Sheares. The ' Cornwallis Correspond- 
ence' (vol. iii. p. 85) reveals the fact that Conway was a double-dyed 
traitor ; that he had offered to become a secret agent for detecting the 
leaders of the United Irishmen, and that the information he gave was 
very valuable, particularly as confirming that received from a solicitor 
in Belfast, who, whilst acting as agent and solicitor to the disaffected 
party, was betraying their secrets to the executive, and earning, in Ids 



70 



AN OMEN OF SUCCESS. 



The Slieares were so exultant and certain of success 
that they took little pains to conceal their project ; a 
curious example of the fatuity of those engaged in the 
" secret society," which they were so desirous of pro- 
moting. The very quickness of the passage was made a 
subject of remark, and taken as omen of success, for they 
had been twice wrecked on previous voyages, once when 
crossing to France, and once when crossing between 
Dublin and Parkgate. 

But if O'Connell was a pacificator in public life, it would 
appear that in his youth he had no objection to settle private 
feuds vi et armis. Some schoolboy quarrel arose at St Omers, 
and he had recourse to something stronger than moral force 
in the assertion of his rights. His fellow-student was not 
accustomed to pugilistic encounters, and said so. O'Con- 
nell inquired what he wished to fight with. " The sword, 
or pistols," replied the young Frenchman. " Then wait a 






a 



vile rSle of informer, a pension, from 1799 to 1S04, of .£150, and the sum 
of .£1460, the wages he received for his services." 

The Sheares, though nominally Protestants, were tinged with 
deistical ideas. " I heard it stated," observed Mr Patten, " that when 
the hangman was in the act of adjusting the noose round the neck of 
John Sheares, before proceeding to the scaffold, he exclaimed, ' D — n 
you, do you want to kill me before my time V I could not credit it, and 
asked the Rev. Dr Smith, who attended them in their last moments, if 
the statement were correct, ' I am sorry to say.' replied Dr Smith, ' that 
it is perfectly true. I myself pressed my hand against his mouth to 
prevent a repetition of the imprecation.'" — The Sham Squire; or, llie 
Rebellion in Ireland of 1798, p. 190. By W. J. Fitzpatrick, Esq., J.P. 
186H. 



ADJUSTMENT OF A QUARREL. 



71 



m 



moment," replied O'Connell ; who left the hall only to 
return in a few moments, and offer his opponent the 
weapons he had named, begging- he would take his choice, 
as it was just the same to him with what weapons he 
fought. 

The French youth declined further combat, and it is said 
that no one attempted any annoyance to O'Connell during 
the remainder of his brief residence at St Omers. 

It was at one time very frequently asserted that the 
Liberator had been intended for the priesthood. This mis- 
take arose naturally from the fact of his having been 
educated at St Omers, and from ignorance of the course 
of education pursued there. The college was originally 
founded for ecclesiastics, but there was also a separate 
foundation for secular students. 6 It is probable that the 



6 Florence Conry, Archbishop of Tuam, and founder of the Irish 
College of Louvain, was one of the first to suggest and to carry out 
the idea of supplying Irish youth with the means of education on the 
Continent, which they were denied at home. It is a fact, unexampled 
in the history of nations, that a whole race should have been thus denied 
the means of acquiring even the elements of learning, and equally un- 
exampled is the zeal with which the nation sought to procure abroad the 
advantages from which they were so cruelly debarred at home. At 
Louvain some of the most distinguished Irish scholars were educated. 
An Irish press was established within its halls, which was kept con- 
stantly employed, and whence proceeded some of the most valuable 
works of the age, as well as a scarcely less important literature for the 
people, in the form of short treatises on religion or history. Colleges 
were also established at Douay, Lisle, Antwerp, Tournay, and St Omers, 
principally through the exertions of Christopher Cusack, a learned priest 
of the diocese of Meath. Cardinal Xhnenes founded an Irish College at 



misapprehension was encouraged for political purposes, 
though O'Connell took pains to contradict it on more than 
one occasion. 

In a letter published in the Dublin Evening Post, July 1 7, 
1828, he says: — " I was not intended for the Church. No 
man respects, loves, or submits to the Church with more alac- 
rity than I do, but I was not intended for the priesthood." 

As O'Connell gave his opinion on the French Revolution 
very fully to Mr Daunt, and as that opinion has been re- 
corded by him, we shall do well to insert it at length. 

O'Connell was asked in the course of our after-dinner 
table-talk, " whether he had read Thiers' work on the French 
Revolution?" 



Lisbon, and Cardinal Henriquez founded a similar establishment at Evora. 
It is a remarkable evidence of the value which has always been set on 
learning by the Catholic Church, that even in times of persecution, when 
literary culture demanded such sacrifices, she would not admit unedu- 
cated persons to the priesthood. Before 1793 there were four colleges 
at Douay. 1st, The grand college for secular students called the 
Grands Anglais. It was purchased by the French Government in 
1820, and is now used as an artillery barracks. 2d, The Scotch Col- 
lege, now occupied by a religious order. 3d, The Irish College, which 
is completely destroyed, and the site occupied by private houses. 4th, 
The Benedictine College, which still flourishes. It was built in 1768, 
and re-opened in 1818. " The Bishop of Ardagh told me," says O'Neill 
Daunt, " that a French captain of artillery said to him shortly after the 
trois jours dt Juillet, ' Some of us imagined that your O'Connell was 
born at St Omers. Ah ! if he had been a native of our country we 
should have made him King of the French.' " Considering the 
fashion in which kings are made and unmade by our continental 
neighbours, we think O'Connell was quite as happy in having been 
born in Ireland. 




THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



73 



" Yes," he replied, " and I do not very much like it. 
Thiers has a strong propensity to laud every one who was 
successful, and to disparage those who did not succeed. 
The best account of the French Revolution is in one of the 
volumes of Marmontel's ' Memoirs.' Certainly," continued 
he, " that Revolution was grievously needed, although it 
was bought at the price of so much blood ! The ecclesi- 
astical abbes were a great public nuisance; they were 
chiefly cadets of noble families, who were provided for with 
sinecure revenues out of the abbey lands. The nobility 
engrossed the commissions in the army ; and both the 
clergy and the nobility, although infinitely the richest 
bodies in the state, were exempt from taxes. The people 
were the scapegoats — they were taxed for all ; the burdens 
of the state were all thrown upon them, whilst its honours 
and emoluments were monopolised by the untaxed. This 
was a gross wrong — the Revolution has swept it away. It 
was highly creditable to the fidelity of the French Catholic 
clergy, that so few of them joined the enemies of religion 
at that trying time of error. I question whether a dozen 
of the French Catholic bishops apostatised ; and as for the 
vast mass of the parochial clergy, they afforded a most 
glorious and sublime example of devotion and faithfulness. 
Catholicity, I trust, will rebound against French Infidelity, 
as she is daily doing against English sectarianism." 

He then spoke of an article in the Edinburgh Review, and 
expressed his satisfaction that the writer was compelled to 



admit that " the Catholic religion is perennial and immor- 
tal ; and as vivacious in the nineteenth century of her 
existence, as she was the day of her first institution." 

O'Connell's abhorrence of anything which tended to 
undermine religious influence showed itself repeatedly in 
his conversations. The account which he himself gave of 
his interview with the secularist Owen is worth recording 
here as an evidence of this. 

" ' Owen called upon me,' said he, ' and told me he had 
come for my co-operation iii a work of universal benevo- 
lence.' I replied that ' I should always be happy to aid 
such a work.' ' I expected no less from your character, 
Mr O'Connell,' said Owen. ' Would not you wish — I am 
sure you would — to elevate the condition of the whole hu- 
man race?' 'Certainly, Mr Owen,' replied I. 'Would 
not you wish to see a good hat on everybody?' ' Un- 
doubtedly.' 'And good shoes?' ' Oh, certainly.' 'And 
good trousers ? ' ' Unquestionably.' ' And would not 
you desire to see the whole family of man well housed 
and fed ? ' ' Doubtless. But, Mr Owen, as my time is 
much taken up, may I beg that you will proceed at once 
to point out how all these desirable objects are, in 
your opinion, to be worked out ? ' 'In the first place, 
Mr O'Connell," said Owen, ' we must educate anew the 
population of these kingdoms, and entirely remove the 
crust of superstitious error from their minds. In fact, the 
whole thing, called Revealed Religion, must be got rid of.' 



■I- 



& 






I thought my worthy visitor was going too far. I rose and 
bowed him out. ' I wish you a very good morning, Mr 
Owen,' said I, ' it would be useless to prolong our inter- 
view. I see at once that you and I cannot co-operate in 
any work or under any circumstances.' " 

In 1794 O'Connell entered as a student in Lincoln's Inn, 
London. He lodged at first in a court on the north side of 
Coventry Street. Fifty years after, as he passed by the 
place, he called the attention of a friend to a fishmonger's 
shop, saying, " That shop is precisely in the same state in 
which I remember it when I was at Gray's Inn. It has 
the same-sized window, the same frontage, and I believe 
the same fish!" While residing here, he followed his 
private occupation of writing, but his taste for a country 
life induced him to make a change of residence in 1795. 
He thus describes his new abode in a letter to his brother- 
Maurice : — 

" I am now only four miles from town, and pay the same price 
for board and lodging as I should in London ; but I enjoy many 
advantages here (in Chiswick) besides air and retirement. The 
society in the house is mixed — I mean composed of men and 
women, all of whom are people of rank and knowledge of the 
world'; so their conversation and manners are perfectly well 
adapted to rub off the dust of scholastic education ; nor is there 
any danger of riot or dissipation, as they are all advanced in life, 
another student of law and I being the only young persons in the 
house. This young man is my most intimate acquaintance, and 
the only friend I have found among my acquaintance. His name 
is Bennett. He is an Irishman of good family connections and 




fortune. He is prudent and strictly economical. He has good 
sense, ability, and application. I knew him before my journey to 
Ireland. It was before that period our friendship commenced. 
So that on the whole I spend my time here not only pleasantly, 
but I hope very usefully. 

" The only law books I have bought as yet are the works of 
Espinasse on the trials of nisi prim. They cost me £1, 10s. ; and 
contain more information on the practical part of the law than any 
other books I have ever met. When in Dublin I reflected that 
carrying any more books than were absolutely necessary would be 
incurring expense ; so I deferred buying a complete set of reports 
until my return thither. 

" I have now two objects to pursue — the one, the attainment of 
knowledge ; the other, the acquisition of those qualities which 
constitute the polite gentleman. I am convinced that the former, 
besides the immediate pleasure that it yields, is calculated to raise 
me to honours, rank, and fortune ; and I know that the latter 
serves as a general passport : and as for the motive of ambition 
which you suggest, I assure you that no man can possess more of 
it than I do. I have indeed a glowing and — if I may use the 
expression — an enthusiastic ambition, which converts every toil 
into a pleasure and every study into an amusement. 

" Though nature may have given me subordinate talents, I never 
will be satisfied with a subordinate situation in my profession. 
No man is able,l am aware, to supply the total deficiency of ability; 
but everybody is capable of improving and enlarging a stock, 
however small and, in its beginning, contemptible. It is this 
reflection that affords me consolation. If I do not rise at the bar, 
I will not have to meet the reproaches of my own conscience. It 
is not because I assert these things now that I should conceive 
myself entitled to call on you to believe them. I refer that con- 
viction which I wish to inspire to your experience. I hope — nay, 
I flatter myself — that when we meet again the success of my efforts 
to correct those bad habits which you pointed out to me will be 




CATHOLIC CHURCH CONSERVATIVE. 



77 



apparent. Indeed, as for my knowledge in the professional line, 
that cannot be discovered for some years to come ; but I have time 
in the interim to prepare myself to appear with great eclat on the 
grand theatre of the world." 

At this period of O'Connell's life he was undoubtedly a 
Tory. His account of his conversion to Liberal opinions is 
both curious and instructive, and it explains an intellectual 
and moral difficulty which has perplexed many English 
Protestants. 

The Catholic Church has always been conservative both 
in principle and in practice ; but because it has always set 
its face steadfastly against individual and public abuses, 
because it has always taken the part of the oppressed 
against the oppressor, its policy has been misrepresented 
by those who desire to exercise arbitrary power unchecked, 
and misunderstood by those who are too indifferent or too 
prejudiced to reason calmly. 

And yet one of the most eminent English Protestant 
historians has admitted this truth, has proclaimed it, has 
asserted it. The historian of the French Revolution writes 
thus : — 

" It was the Christian Church, the parent of so many lofty 
doctrines and new ideas, which had the glory of offering to the 
world, amidst the wreck of ancient institutions, the model of a 
form of government which gives to all classes the right of suffrage, 
by establishing a system which may embrace the remotest in- 
terests, which preserves the energy and avoids the evils of de- 
mocracy, which maintains the tribune, and shuns the strife of the 
forum. 



"The Christian councils were the first examples of representative 
assemblies ; there were united to the whole Roman world there 
a priesthood, which embraced the civilised earth, assembled by 
means of delegates to deliberate on the affairs of the universal 
Church. When Europe revived, it adopted the same model. Every 
nation by degrees borrowed the customs of the Church, to her the 
sole depository of the traditions of civilisation. 

" It was the religion of the vanquished people, and the clergy 
who instructed them in this admirable system, which flourished 
in the councils of Nice, Sardis, and Byzantium, centuries before it 
was heard of in Western Europe, and which did not arise in the 
woods of Germany, but in the catacombs of Rome, during the 
sufferings of the primitive Church." 7 

The Catholic is conservative by religious belief; but by 
conservatism, he understands the protection and the pre- 



i 



7 Alison's History of Europe, vol. iii. p. 176. — Elsewhere he says: "The 
councils of the Church had, so early as the sixth century, introduced 
over all Christendom the most perfect system of, representation. . . . 
Every Christian priest, however humble his station, had some share in 
the practice of these great assemblies, by which the general affairs of 
the Church were to be regulated." In truth this system of conserva- 
tive and representative government has continued in the Catholic 
Church with unbroken regularity from the first council at Antioch, where 
there was " much disputing " until Peter spoke, until the last council 
at Rome, where there was also much disputing until the voice of 
the Church spoke through the majesty of her pastors. Even the infidel 
Voltaire admitted that the Popes restrained princes, and protected the 
people. The Bull In Ccena Domini contained an excommunication 
against those who should levy new taxes upon their estates, or should 
increase those already existing beyond the bounds of right For further 
information on this subject, see Balmez, European Civilisation, passim, 
M. Guizot says : " She [the Church] alone resisted the sj'stem of castes ; 
she alone maintained the principle of equality of competition ; she alone 
called all legitimate superiors to the possession of power." — Hist. Gen. 
de la Civilization en Europe, Lect. 5. 



serration of right, the protection of human nature against 
itself by the enforcement of divine law. 

How much, how often, and how severely Catholics have 
suffered for conservative principles, let history relate. In 
Ireland they were faithful to the most faithless of monarchs. 
In England they were faithful to the most thankless, and 
one of the most unworthy of kings ; and this not from 
any preference for the foolish James, or the wanton 
Charles, but simply from active belief in the divine principle, 
" Render to Csesar the things that are Csesar's," from the 
divine principle of eternal right and justice. It may be 
objected, it has been objected, that Catholics have rebelled 
against their temporal sovereign, and the Irish Rebellion 
will be quoted as an evidence that Catholics can be, and 
have been, not only democratic, but even infidel. The 
exception proves the rule. Catholics have never rebelled 
against any temporal sovereign, unless such rebellion has 
been justified by the necessity for the conservation of the 
power of One higher than any earthly monarch ; and such 
resistances to any lawful constituted human rule have 
been rare. 8 

In France it was not Catholics, but those who had long 



8 It is difficult to induce some persons to consider any such question 
calmly and dispassionately. Englishmen who think at all on the subject, 
are generally loud in their assertions of Irish disloyalty. Now there is 
a very wide difference between loyalty to a sovereign and approbation 
. ol all his acts, or the acts performed by his government. Every English 
monarch who has ruled Ireland has been treated with respect, and 



ceased to be Catholics, who were guilty of regicide, and 
of crimes whose atrocity shocked the whole civilised world. 
The men who dragged Louis XVI. to the scaffold, openly 
renounced all religious belief. The men who murdered 
Charles made a pitiful boast of their religion. 9 

In England, except during times of special persecution, 
which were comparatively rare, Catholics did not suffer 
from political or legal injustice. It is true, indeed, that 
they were denied the rights of citizens, but they were 
tolerated, especially when heavy fines could be obtained 
to replenish the coffers of needy or licentious monarchs. 
The fewness of their number protected them, and what was 



even those Irish papers which write most strongly on the subject of 
English misgovernment, invariably respect the person of the sovereign. 
When the English nation rebelled against James II., he took refuge 
in Ireland ; how he repaid Irish loyalty is but too well known and 
remembered in Ireland. 

9 In France, though many of the clergy were corrupted by the deluge 
of evil which inundated the land, where, and because, all religious 
interests were withdrawn, there were yet a much larger number who 
were faithful. " The clergy in France were far from being insensible 
to the danger of this flood of irreligion which deluged the land." — Ali- 
son's Bistort/ of Europe, vol. i., page 89. Again, "In a general assembly 
of the clergy, held in 1770, the most vigorous resistances against the 
multiplication of irreligious works were made. ' Impiety,' they said " is 
making inroads alike on God and man ; it will never be satisfied till it 
has destroyed every power, divine and human.' " — page 87. " It is a 
remarkable proof how completely ignorant the most able persons in 
Europe were of the ultimate effects of this irreligious spirit, that the 
greatest encouragement which the sceptical philosophy of France received 
was from the despots of the north — Frederick the Great, and the Em- 
press Catherine." — page 88. 



ENGLISH CATHOLIC POLITICS. 



of still more importance, united them. The very hopeless- 
ness of success, if they attempted to interfere in public 
affairs, kept them silent. Agitation would have been worse 
than imprudent, and they had so long learned to keep silence, 
to submit, to live apart from their fellows, to believe peace 
to be the one thing above all others to be desired, that they 
at last came to believe any demand for redress to be 
dangerous, if not positively wrong ; and any agitation to 
be imprudent to the highest degree, if not positively 
culpable. 

Hence the English Catholics, and especially the English 
Catholics of the upper classes, were necessarily conservative, 
and hence also many Irish Catholics of the upper classes, 
from association or intermarriage with English Catholics, 
became conservative also. Their few dependants believed 
as they believed, and thought as they thought. They 
also intermarried with each other, and lived apart, and they 
also feared all change, because, as a general rule, change 
was productive of evil. 

But with the great mass of Irish Catholics, with, in 
fact, all of the middle or poorest class who thought, there 
was little love for Conservatism. Their state was such 
until the close of the last century (and it is of that period 
we write), that however their condition might be improved 
by any change, it could scarcely be injured. 

They had none of the English Catholic traditional love 
of, or reverence for monarchy. How, indeed, could they 



m 



IRISH GA Til 01 1 C P Oil TICS. 



have it ? They were told that a certain person was hing 
of England, but whether that person was a William or a 
George was quite the same to them. It was a sound and 
nothing more. 

They heard indeed the name of their king, but they 
never saw him, they never even felt his influence. A royal 
birth or death was neither a subject of grief nor sorrow. They 
heard that such events occurred, perhaps long after they had 
happened, but for all practical interest or difference which 
it made to them, the birth or the death of a New Zealauder 
would have been just the same. 

But when they complained from time to time against 
injustice, or when they rebelled against it, then indeed they 
were made to feel the power of this distant sovereign, 
of this individual in whose name vindictive and cruel 
punishments were inflicted. Certainly they had no reason 
to uphold monarchy, to revere English law, or to desire to 
preserve English government, as it showed itself to them. 
They could no£ be conservative. 1 



1 When the Irish were not allowed even to rent a small piece of land, 
they called the little plot of earth which could not be denied them a 
" Protestant lease of the sod." It was in allusion to this penal law that 
the Irish rhymer made the attendants at the felon's wake sing — 
" But when dat we found him quite dead, 
In de dustcase we bundled his carcase, 
For a Protestant lease of the sod." 
— Sketches of Ireland Sixty Years Ago, p. 89. Dublin, 1847. 

Colonel Jervis says : " To hold out the bribe of the father's property 
to conforming children, brought into play every ill feeling of which man 






THE WORST CHURCH IX CHRISTEXDOM. 



The influence of the Catholic faith, and the power of the 
Catholic priesthood alone prevented tha Irish Celt from 
avenging his wrongs, not indeed with the ferocity of a Com- 
munist, for the Irish Celt has no taint of cruelty in his 
nature, but with the unflinching vengeance of a Roman 
plebeian. 

It was precisely because many English Catholics failed to 
see the difference between their own position and the posi- 
tion of their Irish brethren, that they looked coldly upon 
O'Connell's career, that they would rather have kept their 
chains around them a little longer than have accepted release 
by the means which he used to obtain it for them. 

And yet, as we have said, O'Connell began life as a 
Conservative. His son thus describes the time and manner 
of the change : — 



iul 



is capable — impiety, ingratitude, hatred between father and son, brother 
and brother. But the penal law has never been found which could con- 
vert mankind to any one doctrine ; on the contrary, persecution breeds 
obstinacy, and the ignorant sinner becomes elevated into the proud 
martyr. Besides, in Ireland there were still no means of exemplifying 
to the masses the greater wisdom of the Church of England. The Pro- 
testant Lord Clarendon complained of the absence of the bishops in 
England, and of the disgraceful state of their dioceses. Queen Mary, as 
head of the Church, wrote to William when in Ireland to take care of it, 
'for everybody agrees it is the worst in Christendom.' Many years 
later the illustrious Bishop Berkeley gave a similar account. Confor- 
mity meant not a belief in Church of England doctrines, but a disbelief 
in revealed religion." — Ireland under British Rule, p. -111. Noonecould 
desire the conservation of such a state of government, or manifest 
attachment to it. 



" On the 21st December 1793, the day the unfortunate 
Louis was beheaded at Paris, the brothers set out in a 
voiture for Calais, which they reached early on the morning 
of the 23d ; not, however, without some parting compli- 
ments from their friends, the soldiery ; who went so far as 
several times to strike the head of the vehicle with their 
musket stocks. The English packet-boat, aboard of which 
the boys proceeded with as little delay as possible, was pre- 
sently under weigh ; and as she passed out of the harbour, 
Mr O'Counell and his brother eagerly tore out of their 
caps the tricolor cockades, which the commonest regard for 
personal safety rendered indispensable to be worn by every 
one in France ; and, after trampling them under foot, flung 
them into the sea. This boyish outburst of natural execra- 
tion of the horrors which had been committed under that 
emblem, procured them a few of those sonorous curses which 
only a Frenchman can give, from some fishermen rowing 
past at the moment, by whom the cockades were rescued 
from the waves, and placed in their hats with all becoming 
reverence. It is not to be wondered at that Mr O'Connell 
should, when, in 1794, he became a law-student in Lincoln's 
Inn, be in a state very nearly approaching, as he has often 
said, to that of a Tory at heart. 

" So strong and ardent were these feelings, that, the cele- 
brated trial of Hardy and others having occurred about 
this time (viz., October 1794), Mr O'Connell attended it 
daily, certainly not more for the mere interest of the thing, 







CONVERSION TO POPULAR OPINIONS. 85 

or benefit of the law arguments to him as a student, than 
for the gratification of anti-revolutionary feeling, at seeing 
a supposed offender against law and social order in a fair 
way of receiving condign punishment. 

" To Mr O'Connell's astonishment, he found, ere the trial 
had proceeded far, that his seutiments were fast changing 
to those of pity towards the accused, and of something of 
self-reproach for having desired his conviction and punish- 
ment; and, each successive day revealing more and_ more 
the trumped-up and iniquitous nature of the prosecution, 2 
the process of change in Mr O'Connell's mind ended by 
fully and finally converting him to popular opinions and 
principles, and confirming his natural detestation of tyranny, 
and desire of resisting it." 

Even Fox had been disgusted with this trial, and saw 
clearly the effect it would be likely to produce on the 






2 This famous trial excited an immense sensation at the time. John 
Home Tooke had been, and according to English law was, a clergyman, 
having embraced the ecclesiastical state to please his father, and very 
much against his own inclination. He was educated at Eton, and 
afterwards at St John's College, Cambridge. In 1773 he studied law. 
While a student he assisted Dr William Tooke upon an enclosure-bill, 
a subject which no doubt led him to consider popular politics, or rather 
to consider politics from the people's point of view. He took up the 
American War with more energy than discretion, condemned the con- 
duct of the government, and made a subscription for the widows and 
orphans of those Americans who had been "murdered by the king's 
troops at Lexington and Concord." He was the author of the elaborate 
"Diversions of Purley." John Thelwall was also a writer of some repu- 
tation. He retired to Wales after his acquittal, and died at Bath in 132-L 



1 



WM 



JfOJVSEiXSE ABOUT CONSPIRACY. 



public mind. He writes thus to Lord Holland, June 23, 
1794:— 

" I think, of all the measures of Government, this last 
nonsense about conspiracy is the most mischievous, and at 
the same time the most foolish. How truly have they made 
good that parallel you drew between the Jacobins of France 
and the Crown party here! If they succeed in committing 
and hanging any of these fellows whom they have taken 
up, it will be considered as a corroboration of the conspiracy, 
and a pretence for more extraordinary powers ; if they fail, 
as I rather think they will, then the consequence that 
always belongs to men who have been falsely accused and 
acquitted will attach to Home Tooke, Thelwall, and 
others like them, and possibly that danger which was only 
imaginary may in time become real by those wise man- 
oeuvres, which, unaccountably to me, my old friends think 
calculated to dispel it." 

The state of England at this period was scarcely less a 
subject of apprehension to public men than the state of Ire- 
land. The most fatal and disastrous calamities might have 
happened in that country if timely concession had not been 
made. In Ireland rebellion was wilfully and advisedly 
excited. In England every reasonable effort was made to 
conciliate. This is a fact which has been completely over- 
looked in considering the history of the period, when 
studied in connection with Irish politics. 

George III. ascended the throne in the year 1760. 



1 



THE GEORGES A SB THEIR MINISTERS. 



His reign was an eventful one, Lut the circumstances 
which made it such were not turned to the national 
advantage. It may be questioned, indeed, whether the 
stolid Hanoverian princes were capable of a large or 
enterprising policy ; that they were capable of mistrust- 
ing ministers who were possessed of larger minds than 
their own, and of following ministers who were too 
pliant for effective service, the contemporary history of 
the period sufficiently proves. 8 

Two great events of the age, the French Revolution and the 
revolt of the American colonies, reacted on English society, 



3 Perhaps, however, some of his ministers were as much to blame for 
faculty of acquiescence. Lord North's character is thus described by 
his ,>wn daughter, Lady Charlotte Lindsay :-« His character in private 
life was, I believe, as faultless as that of any human being can be ; and 
those actions of his public lite which appeared to have been tin- dost 
questionable, proceeded, I am firmly convinced, from what one must 
own was a weakness, though not an unamiable one, and which foil, .wed 
him through his life— the want of power to resist the influence of those 
he loved."- Appendix to Lord Brougham's " Historical Sketches of States, 
men who flourished in the Rei,,n of Georje III." Lord North was made 
Chancellor of the Exchequer in his thirty-sixth year. His parliamentary 
career commenced in 1754, and during Mr Pitt's first administration he 
occupied a seat at the Treasury Board. He was removed by the Rock- 
ingham ministry in 1765, but came into office again with Lord Chatham 
as paymaster. 

A few days only before he became Prime Minister, one of his keenest 
opponents, Mr Burke, thus described him in the House of Commons :— 
" The noble lord who spoke last, after extending his right leg a full 
yard before his left, rolling his naming eyes, and moving his ponderous 
frame, has at length opened his mouth"— Speech of January 9 1770 
' Pari. Hist." xvi. p. 720. 









m 



and on English social life. The monarchs who preceded 
George III. were unpopular, partly because they were 
devoid of those personal attractions which fascinated the 
followers of the house of Stuart, and partly because they 
neither understood, nor took much pains to understand, 
their English subjects. 

The severity with which social crimes were punished only 
tended to increase them, and developed political agitations 
for which there was already sufficient cause. The nation 
had ceased to speak of or believe in the divine right of 
kings. The person of the sovereign was no longer an 
object of respect. This democratic tendency of thought, 
reacted upon by the revolutionary spirit of France, which 
began by denying divine right, and ended by denying 
human justice, had its culmination in England in a per- 
sonal attack on the king, of which O'Connell was an eye- 
witness. Of this attack we shall speak more fully after 
entering into the details of the circumstances which pre- 
ceded it. 

George III., however, had two advantages, of which, how- 
ever, he was unfortunate enough not to have made the most. 
He was born in England, and he had just sufficient wit to 
see that this was a claim on the fealty of his English sub- 
jects. His private life was virtuous, and formed a con- 
trast to that of the majority of his predecessors. 4 

* " When George II. had to receive the Holy Eucharist, his main 




GEORGE III. AND ROYAL SUPREMACY. 



Unfortunately for himself, he was under the influence of 
the Earl of Bute. This influence was one which had taken 
its rise in his early life, and under somewhat questionable 
circumstances. The king is said to have written his first 
speech to Parliament himself, but it was alleged that Lord 
Bute amended it, and substituted the word Briton for 
Englishman. 6 This, certainly, gratified the Scotch party, 
if it did not merit the approbation of the Tories. The 
Whigs had been fifty-five years in offlce, but Tory prin- 
ciples, such as they then were, suited the king, who had 
wooden ideas on the subject of royal supremacy, for it was 
not the supremacy of divine right, but the supremacy of 
a wooden, unvarying rule. 



Riots began early in this reign. The Whigs believed 
that Bute intended to undermine their power, and a beer-tax, 
of which he got the credit, made him unpopular with the 



anxiety seems to have been that the sermon on that day might he a 
short one, since otherwise he was, to use his own words, ' in danger of 
falling asleep and catching cold.' "—Lord Mahon, HUt. v. p. 54. Bishop 
Newton says {Works, i. p. 76, ed. 1787), that he always took care in his 
sermons at Court to come within the compass of twenty minutes ; but 
after a hint as to brevity, " on the great festivals of the Church, he never 
exceeded fifteen, so that the King sometimes said to the Clerk of the 
Closet, ' A good short sermon.' " 

6 " I have heard it related," says Lord Mahon, iv. p. 212, " but on no 
very clear or certain authority, that the King hud in the first place 
•written the word 'Englishman,' and that Lord Bute altered it to 

' Briton.'" The King's speech was admired by Frederick the Great. 

Mitchell Papers, vol. v. No. 201, p. 148. 




90 THE WORST ENGLISH GOVERNMENT. 

people. There was a disturbance in the play-house the 
3'ear after the king's accession. 6 

The Bute administration lasted just ten months, and the 
Scotch lord went out of office, having made a peace which 
was unpopular because he made it, and leaving his own 
unpopularity as a bequest to his master. 

His family said that he retired from office for the sake 
of his personal safety ; his own account of the matter was 
that he was afraid of involving his royal master in his 
ruin. 7 

The Grenville administration followed, and the king 
found himself lectured in his closet, and snubbed in his 
most innocent pursuits. Macaulay characterised this ad- 
ministration as the worst which ever governed England 
since the Revolution. The king bore the lectures as best 



6 A few days after Lord Bute was sworn in to the Privy Council, a 
handbill was affixed to the Royal Exchange, with these words : — " No 
petticoat government, no Scotch favourites, no Lord George Sackville." 
A joke went round the Court whether the King would have " Scotch 
coal, Newcastle coal, or Irish coal." 

7 " The alarms of Lord Bute's family about his personal safety are 
reported here to be the immediate cause of his sudden abdication." — 
Memoirs of Rockingham, vol. i. p. 1GJ. — "Single in a Cabinet of my 
own forming ; no aid in the House of Lords to support me, except two 
Peers (Denbigh and Pomfret) ; both the Secretaries of State (Lords 
Egremont and Halifax) silent; and the Lord Chief Justice (Mansfield), 
whom I myself brought into office, voting for me and yet speaking 
against me— the ground I tread upon is so hollow that I am afraid not 
only of falling myself, but of involving my royal master in my rain. 
It is time for me to retire." — Adolphus, vol. i. p. 117. See also " The 
Correspondence of George 111. and Lord North," vol. i. p. lxxi. 



INAUGURATION OF CIVIL WAR. 

he could, but he could not get even a small sum of money 
to purchase some fields near the Queen's House. 

The Rockingham administration succeeded, and its mem- 
bers treated their sovereign " with decency and reverence ;" 
but Pitt could not work with them, and they could not 
work without Pitt. 

In 1763, on the 14th of March, George III. recommended 
a proper compensation to be made to the Americans for their 
expenses in the war of 1756. Almost on that very clay 
twelvemonths, Mr Grenville brought forward his uufor- 
tunate resolution (9th March 1764), which inaugurated the 
civil war. " That towards defraying the said expenses, 
it may be proper to charge certain stamp-duties on the 
said colonies and plantations." In February 1765, this 
resolution passed into a law. The law passed with 
little anticipation of its fatal results. Burke sat in the 
gallery listening to the speeches, and declared he never 
heard " a more languid debate." The House of Lords did 
not even trouble themselves to debate. 

The truth was that English senators looked on the 
American colonies as a dependency which they could treat 
as they pleased. They forgot that the descendants of the 
sturdy race of men who fled from England to escape 
religious and political oppression, were scarcely likely to 
submit to it in their adopted country. They forgot that 
the descendants of such men were likely to be thinkers, 
to be men who would know their own interests. 



m 



MISMANAGEMENT OF THE COLONIES. 

It was a brief history certainly, but it was none the less 
significant. 

The English government relied too much on the possible 
effects of their traditional reverence for that land from 
which they had expatriated themselves. That reverence 
did exist, but it was merely traditional. The moment the 
tradition was weakened by the stern logic of facts, its 
shattered links fell to the ground, and never again re- 
united. 

There were few men in England who grasped the diffi- 
culties of the case, who had sufficient intellect to look 
beyond the present, sufficient self-sacrifice to forego pre- 
sent gain when it was sure that it must be purchased at 
the cost of future loss. 

Burke indeed did his best. He warned the Government 
that they were treating with an intelligent people, and 
with a people who not only loved justice, but thoroughly 
understood law, 8 a people " who snuffed the approach of 



8 Burke, speaking of the education of the colonists, said : "I have been 
told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after 
tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law ex- 
ported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way 
of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly 
as many of Blackstone's 'Commentaries' in America as in England. 
General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on 
yum tal ile. He states that all the people in his government are lawyers, 
or smatterers in law ; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by 
successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital 
penal constitutions. . . . This study renders men acute, inquisitive, 




tyranny." Chatham did his best also, hut the tide had 
set in the wrong direction ; and who could control an 
obstinate king, and ministers, some of whom were self-suffi- 
cient, and some of whom were self-interested? 

But the public were not satisfied with contempt for Ameri- 
can intellect. 9 There was open contempt for American 
military power, and both public and private contempt was 
beaped on Franklin, one of America's greatest men. At- 
torney-Generals have not always distinguished themselves 
by prudence, but few men who have held that position in 
England have stultified themselves or their country so 
completely as Wedderburn, one of the Solicitor-Generals 
who ruled the legal destinies of England in the reign of 
George III. 



i 



«, 



dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In 
other countries the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, 
judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance ; 
here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance 
by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a dis- 
tance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze." 

9 In the debate of 16th March 1775, Lord Sandwich said : "The noble 
lord [Camden] mentions the impracticability of conquering America. I 
cannot think the noble lord can be serious on this matter. Suppose the 
colonies do abound in men, what does that signify 1 They are raw, un- 
disciplined, cowardly men. I wish that, instead of 40,000 or 50,000 of 
these half-bred fellows, they would produce in the field at least 200,000, 
the more the better, the easier would be the conquest." Then he 
related an anecdote of Sir Peter Warren, and continued, — " Believe 
me, my lords, the very sound of a cannon will carry them, in his [Sir 
Peter's] words,, as fast as their feet could carry them." — See " Life and 
Times of C. J. Fox," by Earl Russell. 



B EiiJA MIN FRA NKLJN. 



B njamin Franklin was the son of a Boston merchant. 
Hebegau life as an apprentice tohis father's business, though 
it is said he was originally intended for the ministry in 
some religious persuasion. But the lad abhorred trade, and 
at last obtained service with his brother, a printer. After a 
time he removed to Philadelphia. Here he was noticed 
by the English governor, Sir William Keith, and it is said 
that lie was deceived by him. Possibly Sir William only 
promised more than he could perform. The result was 
Franklin's removal to England as early as 1725, when he 
entered as a journeyman in the well-known and time- 
honoured establishment of Messrs Cox & Wyman. He 
returned again to America, where he married a rich widow, 
and published the famous " Poor Richard's Almanack." 
In 1757 he was sent to England as a delegate for Penn- 
sylvania. He returned once more to his native land, and 
in 1764 and in 1766 he was examined at the bar of the 
English House. The members were anxious to prove that 
the American colonies were contumacious, but all evidence 
goes to prove that they were not, and that they did not 
desire separation from England until they found that 
England compelled them to revolt. Franklin declared that 
" the authority of Parliament was allowed to be valid in 
all laws, except such as should lay internal taxes : that it 
was never disputed in laying duties to regulate commerce : 
that the Americans would never submit to the Stamp Act, 
or to any other tax on the same principle : that North 



"■*<* 



WASHINGTON ON THE COLONISTS. 



m 



America would contribute to the support of Great Britain, 
if engaged in a war in Europe." 

Washington wrote thus :— " Although you are taught 
to believe that the people of Massachusetts are rebellious, 
setting up for ^dependency, and what not, give me leave, 
my good friend, to tell you that you are abused, grossly 
abused. This I advance with a degree of confidence and 
boldness which may claim your belief, having better oppor- 
tunities of knowing the real sentiments of the people you 
are among, from the leaders of them, in opposition to the 
jiresent measures of Administration, than you have from 
those whose business it is, not to disclose truths, but to 
misrepresent facts, in order to justify, as much as possible, 
to the world their own conduct. Give me leave to add, and 
I think I can announce it as a fact, that it is not the wish 
or interest of that government, or any other upon this con- 
tinent, separately or collectively, to set up for independ- 
ence ; but this you may at the same time rely on, that 
none of them will ever submit to the loss of those valuable 
rights and privileges which are essential to the happiness 
of every free state, and without which life, liberty, and 
property are rendered totally insecure." 1 

In the last debate of the Lords attended by Franklin, 
March 16th, 1775, he heard American courage, American 
religion, American intellect, branded as cowardice, hypo- 



1 Spark's Life of Washington, vol. i. p. 130. 




crisy, and dulness. " We were treated," he says, "as the 
lowest of mankind, and almost of a different species from 
the English of Great Britain ; but particularly American 
honesty was abused by some of the Lords, who asserted that 
we were all knaves, and wanted only by this dispute to 
avoid paying our debts." 

An eminent English writer says : — " On this occasion a 
few tongues helped to dismember an empire. Chatham's 
prophetic eye had discerned months before this memorable 
debate the issue of such zealotry. And in the month of 
November 1776, when America was ringing with the De- 
claration of Independence, and England was exasperated by 
what it considered as the sin of witchcraft, the Earl, being 
then very sick at Hayes, and not expecting to recover, 
solemnly charged his physician, Dr Addington, to bear testi- 
mony that he died with his opinions respecting America 
unchanged. He renewed a former prediction, that unless 
England changed her policy, France would espouse the 
cause of the Americans. France, he said, only waited till 
England was more deeply engaged in this " ruining war 
against herself in America, as well as to prove how far 
the Americans, abetted by France indirectly only, may be 
able to make a stand, before she takes an open part by 
declaring war upon England." 2 

Every one, to speak broadly, was against America ; 



2 George the Third and Lord North, vol. ij. p. 9. 



THE TEA- TAX. 



97 



I 
1 



m 



certainly those who defended her cause could be easily 
counted ; hut it was unfortunate that the multitude were 
not a little more reserved in their expressions, that they so 
openly expressed their scorn for, and depreciation of, an 
enemy who overcame them so easily. 3 

They forgot that contempt is not argument, and they 
forgot also " what extraordinary obstacles a small band of 
insurgents may surmount in the cause of liberty." 4 

The American Congress held its first sittings at Phila- 
delphia on the 4th of September 1774. The members were 
willing to make peace, but they wisely prepared for war. 
The result is too well known to need further record. The 
" tea-tax " was but the last attempt to fetter a people who 



& 






3 Johnson, the lexicographer, had a share in exciting the popular 
feeling also. He wrote a pamphlet entitled " Taxation no Tyranny," 
but he forgot to say anything about the necessity for justice in taxation. 
He said : " One of their complaints is not such as can claim much com- 
miseration from the softest bosom. They tell us that we have changed 
our conduct, and that a tax is now laid by Parliament on those which 
[sic] were never taxed by Parliament before. To this we think it may 
be easily answered that the longer they have been spared, the better 
they can pay." " By a similar process of arguing," observes Mr Daunt, 
" Hampden might be shown to have been in arrear for ship-money, and 
Prynne for ears." 

All kinds of stories went the round in England on the subject of 
American incompetence, moral and physical. Farces were enacted in 
the theatres in which tailors and cobblers were described as samples of 
American soldiers. A young American officer who was present on one 
occasion, shouted out from his box, " Hurrah ! but Britain is beaten by 
tailors and cobblers." 

4 Speech in the debates. 

G 



08 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 



were determined to be free, and who carried out their 
determination. The Declaration of Independence was 
signed on the 4th of July 1776, by Adams, Franklin, and 
Jefferson, and America became a nation and the home 
of the exiled Celt. To her and to them we say, Esto 
perpetua. 

Thus we find America free at the birth of O'Connell, and 
at the same time we find the first indications of a union in 
feeling and principle between Ireland and America. It is 
a subject which ought to be of considerable interest to 
every Englishman, which is of the very deepest interest 
to every Irishman. If another war should break out 
between America and England — and with the pressure 
of the Irish vote on American politics, such an event 
might not require even the settlement of "Alabama" or 
any other claims to precipitate it — there can be no doubt 
that millions of expatriated Irishmen would join in the 
conflict with something more than ordinary military 
ardour. 

If, as we shall presently show, England was compelled 
to grant some trifling instalments of justice to Ireland 
when threatened on all sides by peril at the close of the 
last century, it would be but common prudence on her part 
to make Ireland forget her past wrongs and her present 
sorrows. 

One of the things not generally known, or, if known, not 
generally considered, in connection with American inde- 



mm 




AMERICA APPEALS TO IRELAND. 



pendence, is the Address to the People of Ireland which 
was issued by Congress. They appeal to Irelaud because 
they are " desirous of the good opinion of the virtuous and 
humane." 

" We are desirous of the good opinion of the virtuous 
and humane. We are peculiarly desirous of furnishing 
you with the true state of our motives and objects, the 
better to enable you to judge of our conduct with accuracy 
and determine the merits of the controversy with impar- 
tiality and precision. Your Parliament had done us no 
wrong. You had ever been friendly to the rights of man- 
kind; and we acknowledge with pleasure and gratitude 
that your nation has produced patriots who have nobly 
distinguished themselves in the cause of humanity and 
America." 

Another thing not generally known, or not sufficiently 
considered, is, that some of the leading men in the Ameri- 
can revolt were Irish. Even then some few Celts had 
found their way to the land in which they were to obtain 
such numerical strength at a future day. 

Thompson, the secretary of Congress, was Irish. He 
had been agitating against England for ten years. Frank- 
lin corresponded with him frequently, and wrote to him 
from London, " The sun of liberty is set; we must now 
light up the caudles of industrj'." Thompson's reply was 
significant, " Be assured we shall light up torches of a very 
different kind." 



100 



THE "OSTRICH-EGG." 



Montgomery was an Irishman. He captured Montreal 
and died before Quebec* 

O'Brien was an Irishman, and commanded in the first 
naval engagement with England. 

On the 2d of February, Walpole writes to Mann : — 
" We have no news public or private ; but there is an 
ostrich-egg laid in America, where the Bostonians have 
canted three hundred chests of tea into the ocean, for 
they will not drink tea with our Parliament. . . . Lord 
Chatham talked of conquering America in Germany ; I 
believe England will be conquered some day in New Eng- 
land or Bengal." 




See Burns' spirited lines : — 

" And yet what reck ! he at Quebec, 

Montgomery-like did fa', man, 

Wi' sword in hand before his band, 

Ainang his enemies a', man." 






POLITICAL TROUBLES IN ENGLAND-ATTACK ON THE KINO- FONDNESS FOR 
HELD SPORTS-FEVER-FtRST VISIT TO DUBLIN-ENGLISH POLICY WITH 
IRELAND-FORCED ATTEMPT AT LEGI8LATIVE JUSTICE-CAUSES AND 
CHARACTER OF THE IRISH REBELLION-GRAITAN-LORD CHARLEMONT- 
IRELAND IN ARMS-ALARM IN ENGLAND-WANTS OF IRELAND-MR FOX- 
REPEAL OF ACT VI. GEO. I.-CADSES OF THE RDIN OF HUSH INDEPENDENCB 
— ENGLISH BRIBERY — GRATTAN's LETTEB, 




The king was fully aware of the danger, and wrote thus 

to Lord North : — 

" Queen's House, October 25, 1775. 
2 nun. past 11 a.m. 

" Lord North, — On the receipt of your letter I have ordered 
y<A I Elliot's regiment to march from Henley to Hounslow, and the 

Horse and Grenadier Guards to take up their horses. These 
handbills are certainly spread to cause terror, but they may in the 
timid duke I saw yesterday, but I thank God I am not of that 
make. I know what my duty to my country makes me undertake, 
and threats cannot prevent me from doing that to the fullest 
extent." 7 

In 1779, the king seemed to be recovered sufficiently to 
see the possible danger to English interests in Ireland. 
In a letter dated Kew, June 11, 1779, he says: "The 
present difficulties keep my mind very far from a state of 
ease. ... I have heard Lord North frequently drop that 
the advantages to he gained by this contest could never 
repay the expence ; I owue that, let any war he ever so 
successful, if persons will sit down and weigh the expences, 
they will find, as in the last, that it has impoverished the 
state, enriched individuals, and perhaps raised the name 



' Correspondence, vol. i. p. 20. — " Queen's House, afterwards Buck- 
ingham House, was bought of Sir Charles Sheffield by George the Third 
in 1761 for ,£21,000, and settled on Queen Charlotte, in lieu of Somerset 
House, by an Act passed in 1775. Here all the King's children were 
born, George the Fourth alone excepted . The Queen's House was taken 
down in 1825 to make room for the present Buckingham Palace." — Cun- 
ningham's Handbook of London, p. 86, 2d ed. 







LETTER OF GEO RUE III. 



only of the conquerors; but this is only weighing such 
events in the scale of a tradesman behind his counter ; it 
is necessary for those in the station it has pleased Divine 
Providence to place me to weigh whether expences, though 
very great, are not sometimes necessary to prevent what 
might be more ruinous to a country than the loss of money. 
The present contest with America, I cannot help seeing, as 
the most serious in which any country was ever engaged : 
it contains such a train of consequences that they must be 
examined to feel its real weight. Whether the laying a 
tax was deserving all the evils that have arisen from it, I 
should suppose no man could alledge [sic] that without 
being thought more fit for Bedlam than a seat in the 
Senate; but step by step .the demands of America have 
risen: independence is their object; that certainly is one 
which every man not willing to sacrifice every object to a 
momentary and inglorious peace must concurr with me in 
thinking that this country can never submit to : should 
America succeed in that, the West Indies must follow 
them, not independence, but must for its own interest be 
dependent on North America. Ireland would soon follow 
the same plan and be a separate state ; then this island * 
would be reduced to itself, and soon would be a poor island 
indeed, for, reduced in her trade, merchants would retire 
with their wealth to climates more to their advantage, and 
shoals of manufacturers would leave this country for the 
new empire." 









1 



THE GORDON RIOTS. 



There was no question of Irish loss or gain, except in so 
far as Irish loss or gain affected English interests, and it 
required a very much larger intellect than that of George 
III. to see that these interests were, or ought to be, iden- 
tical. 

About the same time the Duke of Richmond made a 
motion in the House of Lords, in which he said: " That 
in a moment so critical, the most awful this country 
had ever experienced, it would be deceiving His Majesty 
and the nation if they were not to represent that the 
only means of resisting the powerful combination which 
threatened the country would be by a total change of that 
system which had involved us in our present difficulties in 
America, in Ireland, and at home." 

The Gordon riots took place in 1780, and lasted from the 
2d of June until the 9th. Parliament was unable to meet 
during this commotion. It was suspected that the French 
were the instigators of it, as at that time everything 
revolutionary was laid to their charge. The king wanted 
to have ".examples made," and told Lord North he must 
" get to the bottom of it." A difficult task for that easy- 
going minister, who was scarcely capable of getting to the 
bottom of anything. 

In 1783 (July 24) the king expressed a strung opinion 
on the state of public affairs by no means complimentary to 
himself or his ministers : — ■ 

" Undoubtedly there is less regularity in the modes of 



•i 



conducting business in this kingdom than in any other 
European, or the mode of calling a new parliament iu 
Ireland ought to have been so clearly stated in the 
change of that constitution 'that no room ought to have 
been left for doubts as to the proper method of effecting 
it, But I fear folly, not reason, dictated the measure, 
and therefore it is not surprising every step has not been 
well weighed." 

In November he declared that " Ireland was in fact dis- 
united from England," and certainly not without cause. 
The volunteers had been organised, and the volunteers were 
determined to have justice done to their country, while 
England was unable to deny it in consequence of her own 
personal embarrassments. 

There was war in India also, and though this did not 
very much concern the nation at large, till some few honour- 
able men were roused by the recital of the horrible cruelties 
practised on the unhappy natives, it was not without its 
effect. 

The king and the Prince of AVales quarrelled, and the 
unhappy monarch exhibited the first symptoms of that 
malady which clouded his latter years. 

In 1795 all England was excited, turbulent, and violent. 
The war had necessitated increased taxation, increased 
taxation involved distress, and distress fell grievously on 
those who were least able to bear it. 

Men who could lose thousands of pounds in a game of 




chance, or who could spend hundreds of pounds on mere 
luxuries, were not likely to understand the sharp suf- 
ferings of those who had not sixpence to spare for a 
luxury, who had not at times a penny to buy a loaf of 
bread. There were few who could even comprehend the 
terrible misery of starvation, and the terrible agony of 
seeing wife and child pining away for want of common 
sustenance. 8 

Those who suffered thus were not likely to make nice 
distinctions as to the cause. The king as the ruler of the 
nation was naturally credited with being the origin of t lie 



8 Alison's " History of Europe," vol. iii. p. 20, thus describes the state 
of England : — " The condition of Great Britain in the close of 1795 and 
the beginning of 1796, was nearly as distracted, so far as public opinion 
went, as that of France. So violent had party spirit become, and so 
completely had it usurped the place of patriotism or reason, that many 
of the popular leaders had come to wish anxiously for the triumph of 
their enemies. It was no longer a simple disapprobation of the war 
which they felt, but a fervent desire that it might terminate to the dis- 
advantage of their country, and that the Republican might triumph over 
the British arms. They thought that there was no chance of parliamen- 
tary reform being carried, or anj considerable addition to democratic 
power acquired, unless the ministry were deposed; and to accomplish 
this object they hesitated not to betray their wish for the success of the in- 
veterate eneihies of their country. These ill humours which were afloat 
during the whole of the summer of 1795, broke out into acts of open 
violence in the autumn of that year. These causes of discontent were 
increased by the high price of provisions, the natural consequence of the 
increased consumption and enlarged circulating medium required in the 
war, but which the lower orders, under the instigation of their dema- 
gogues, ascribed entirely to the ministry, and the crusade which they 
had undertaken against the liberties of mankind.'' 




national troubles. The king it was supposed could remedy 
them, and did not do so, and popular vengeance sought to 
make the king the victim of its indignation. 

O'Connell was an eye-witness of this scene, and when he 
heard bitter reflections made, in later years, on the poor 
Irish peasant who attempted the life of a landlord who 
had deprived him of house, home, and even of the very 
possibility of labouring for an existence, it is little wonder 
thai his honest heart burned with indignation when men 
condemned this, and lightly passed over an attempt at 
regicide which certainly had not the excuse of being 
excited by actual starvation. 

The attack on the king was made on the 29th of October 
1795, as he was returning from Parliament. O'Connell 
went with a friend to St James' Park, little anticipating 
the extraordinary scene which he was to witness. He thus 
described it himself to Mr Daunt : " The carriage, sur- 
rounded by a nois\ , angry, and excited mob, came moving 
slowly along. Suddenly the glass in the royal window was 
smashed by some individual in the crowd, who, having read 
the Bible, " rendered unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's," by flinging a penny at His Majesty. The flash- 
ing sabres of the dragoons were drawn immediately, the 
loud voice of imperative command was ringing above the 
tumultuous sounds, and the dragoons, clearing their way 
through the huddled and scrambling multitude with bran- 
dished blades and curveting horses, advanced in a gallop in 



m 



front of the king's carriage. As the procession approached 
the place where O'Connell stood he pressed forward to get 
a sight of the king, when a dragoon made a furious slash at 
him, which deeply notched the tree about an inch or two 
above his head. Groans, hootings, and hisses filled the air, 
and the king's life seemed in imminent danger ; however, he 
got rid of his dutiful subjects, and entered St James's Palace, 
where he took off his robes in a wonderfully short time. He 
then came out at the opposite side of the palace, next 
Cleveland Row, and entered a coach drawn by two larg<; 
black Hanoverian horses. He was subsequently driven 
towards Buckingham House, and just as he was passing the 
bottom of the Green Park, the mob tumultuously swarmed 
round the carriage, seized the wheels, and, with united 
strength and horrible vociferations, prevented their revolu- 
tion, though the postilions, with desperate cuts, rained 
showers of blows on the straining and perspiring horses. 
The mob seemed intent on tearing the king to pieces. 
Two fellows at this moment approached the carriage — the 
hand of one was on the door-handle in the act of opening 
it. Had the door opened they would doubtless have dragged 
the king headlong out and murdered him on the spot. At 
this critical juncture a tall determined-looking man thrust 
a pistol through the opposite window at the fellows who 
were going to open the door; they shrank back, the mob 
relaxed their grasp on the wheels, the postilions flogged 
their horses, and the carriage went off at a gallop to Buck- 



I 







1 



ingham House. Never had king a mure narrow escape. It 
was a terrible scene." 

O'Connell returned home soon after, and some curious 
and characteristic anecdotes were told of his family life. 
For himself it is said that he was passionately fond of field 
sports, and took care to make up now for lost time by double 
enjoyment. No doubt that hardy constitution which made 
him bear up under years of such mental and physical toil 
as few men have ever endured, was braced and invigorated 
by the fresh Atlantic breezes of his mountain home. 

His son thus describes him at this period: "Often has 
the writer of these pages heard him describe, in his own 
graphic manner, his going out before dawn, to ensure that 
his few hounds should have the help of the scent still lying; 
the feelings of the party as they crouched amid the heather, 
waiting for day; the larks springing all around, and the 
eager clogs struggling to get free from the arms that re- 
strained them. A wager — the only wager of Mr O'ConnelPs 
life — was successfully accomplished by him with four of 
these hounds ; namely, the killing of four hares in three 
successive days. The four hounds, in fact, ran down and 
killed six hares in those three days, and vaulted another — 
a feat which he boasts no four hounds now living could 
accomplish." 

The vice of hard drinking was not one in which the 
future Liberator indulged. He was temperate ; either 
from inclination, or from being unable to imbibe the 



copious potations which his companions considered almost 
a necessary of life. 

It is said that he was one of the first to hreak through 
the time-honoured rule that the door should be locked after 
dinner, and the key thrown out of the window until every 
guest had drunk to intoxication. 9 



9 This practice was by no means confined to the wilds of Kerry, or in- 
deed to Ireland. At Shanes Castle, where Mrs Siddons often took part 
in private theatricals, Lord Mountjoy drew up in joke a set of rules for 
the company, which give an amusing idea of the state of society even in 
the highest circles : — 

" Resolutions formed to promote regularity at Shanes Castle, at the 
meeting for the representation of ' Cymbeline~ Nov. 20, 1785. 

" 1. That no noise be made during the forenoon, for fear of wakening 
the company. 

" 2. That there shall be no breakfast made after four o'clock in the 
afternoon, nor tea after one in the morning. 

" 3. To inform any stranger who may come in at breakfast, that we 
are not at dinner. 

" 4. That no person be permitted to go out airing after breakfast till 
the moon gets up, for fear of being overturned in the dark. 

" 5. That the respective grooms may put up their horses after four 
hours' parading before the hall-door of the Castle. 

"6. That there shall be one complete hour between each meaL 

" 7. That all the company must assemble at dinner before the cloth is 
removed. 

" 8. That supper may not be called for till five minutes after the last 
glass of claret. 

" 9. That no gentleman be permitted to drink more than three bottles 
of hock at or after supper. 

"10. That all M.P.'s shall assemble on post-days in the coffee-room 
at four o'clock to frank letters." — CorniraUis' Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 
349. The free and easy style of living is as manifest from Rule 2, as 
the genial and general hospitality by Rule 5. 



CO U 'Siy KANE. 



O'Connell' s favourite place in his uncle's house was the 
sideboard, where he found more freedom to indulge his jokes, 
and more liberty to come and go as he pleased. 

A certain " Cousin Kane," who enjoyed " free quar- 
ters " whenever he could get them — and when was hospi- 
tality ever refused in the "Green Island?" — was one of 
the county characters. Cousin Kane had that charming 
facility of accommodation which satisfied itself every- 
where, at least for a time ; and with his two horses and his 
twelve dogs, he quartered himself from week to week, now 
in one house and now in another, where he could, or said 
he could claim kin. Yet Cousin Kane's disposition does not 
seem to have been improved by his travels, for it is said that 
on one occasion there were seventy-six actions for assault 
and battery pending against him at the Tralee assizes. 
O'Connell offended him once by giving him whisky instead 
of sherry in mistake. Kane drank the whisky at a draught, 
and then commenced vituperating his young cousin, con- 
cluding his harangue by roaring in a tone of thunder, " Fill 
it again, sir ! " 

Ou the following morning, Kane got up at two o'clock 
and wakened O'Connell by his noise. " What are you 
about?" said O'Connell, " the clock has only struck two." 
" Do you think I am to be a slave to that lying devil of 
a clock ye have there? " raved Kane. " Do you think a 
gentleman like me is to be ruled and governed by a black- 
guard of a clock like that — eh ? For what would I stay in 



58, 

w 

w 



bed if it struck twenty-two when I cannot sleep ? " Mani- 
festly " Cousin Kane " would have been an ardent admirer 
of rule number four of the Shanes Castle code. 

In 1798, after O'Connell had been called to the bar, and 
before he went his first circuit, his life was despaired of, in 
consequence of his having takeu a violent chill, which 
resulted in fever. His own eagerness in the chase was the 
immediate cause of this malady. His son thus records the 
circumstances, as related by his father: — 

" Eagerness in the pursuit of this amusement had nearly 
cost him his life in the eventful year 1798 — the same in 
which he was called to the bar. After the latter occur- 
rence, which took place May 19, and before his first circuit, 
he proceeded, in August, to Darrynane ; and there, from a 
young man's imprudence in allowing wet clothes to dry 
on him while he slept before a peasant's fire after a hard 
morning's hunting, was, after the further imprudence of 
attempting, during a fortnight, to fight off the fierce 
assailant, prostrated by a most severe and dangerous typhus 
fever. Early in the disorder, he obtained a full conscious- 
ness of his danger, and retained that consciousness in the 
intervals of the fits of delirium, which came upon him 
violently and frequently. Whenever the mind was able to 
assert its self-control, his most constant and bitterest 
thought was, that he was about to die, without having been 
able to gratify the instinctive and inuate feeling which 
from infancy had been uppermost in his mind — the feeling 




§ 






of craving, that it might be his lot to do something for 
Ireland ; and it is a curious fact that, in his ravings, he 
was constantly heard repeating the following lines from 
the tragedy of Douglas : — 

' Unknown, I die ; no tongue shall speak of me: 
Some noble spirits, judging by themselves, 
May yet conjecture what I might have proved, 
And think life only wanting to my fame ! ' 

" An affecting incident marked the turn of the disorder. 
When, as he felt himself, and as he appeared to others, he 
was falling into his agony, his head had slipped from the 
pillow, and death would have been accelerated by the 
position, a cousin of his, who was present, raised him and 
supported him in her arms. While for a moment revived 
by this, his father came to the bedside, and, after contem- 
plating him for a moment with agonised feelings, addressed 
him with ' Dan, don't you know me?' As with the last 
effort of nature, the son pressed the father's hand, in token 
of affectionate recognition ; and, with the effort, the fell 
disease, that had so long been triumphant, seemed to be, 
for the first time, arrested — the crisis arrived, twenty-four 
hours' sleep followed, and thenceforth began, and steadily 
continued, the restoration of health." 

During the same illness, Napoleon's successful march to 
Alexandria was mentioned in his presence. The acute 
mind, which at once grasped the impossibilities, as well as 
the possibilities of any plan, political or social, at once 




FIRST VISIT TO DUBLIN. 



asserted itself. "'That is impossible,' said the patient; 
' he cannot have done so — they would have been starved.' 
•Oh, no,' replied the doctor; 'they had a quantity of 
portable soup, sufficient to feed the army for four days.' 
'Ay,' replied O'Connell, 'but had they portable water? 
For their portable soup would be of little use without the 
water to dissolve it.' The medical gentleman, glancing 
hopefully at the mother, said, in a low and satisfied tone, 
' His intellect at any rate is untouched.' " 

O'Connell went to Dublin in the year 1797, probably 
with a view to further preparation for being called to the 
bar, possibly with the intention of making friends who 
might serve him in his new career. It would appear to 
have been his first visit to the Irish metropolis ;— under how 
many different phases he must have seen it afterwards, 
under how many different circumstances he must have 
entered it ! He had witnessed the assembling of an Eng- 
lish parliament, he has now to witness the last debates of 
the Irish house. In England he had heard Pitt, and Fox, 
and Burke ; x in Dublin, he heard Grattan and Flood. 

In Euo-land he had seen the king attacked in open day 




l He spoke ^^ la ^ time on the 20th of JuDe 1794 ' HiS brotheT 
Richard died during this year, and Ids death inflicted a deep blow on 
the sensitive heart of the great Irishman. " Dick" was indeed a uni- 
versal favourite. Every one loved him in the BaHitore Quaker school, 
where he was educated ; and if he was " wished full ten times a day at 
old Nick," not mdced by his friends, who would scarcely pardon such 




CAUSES OF THE REBELLION. 



I 

8S 



by his own subjects, and only saved from an instant and 
terrible death by a military escort. In Ireland lie was to 
be a witness to secret rebellion, and even to be personally 
compromised in it. 

The state of Ireland at that period was certainly alarm- 
ing, and lias been unfortunately but too little understood. 

The broad outlines of contemporary history are indeed 
familiar to all educated persons; The manner in which the 
Irish rebellion was — shall we say encouraged, or excited 
by English statesmen ? — is admitted, because it cannot be 
denied, by some English historians ; the fraud and force by 
which the Union was effected is known equally well, but not. 
perhaps, generally believed. Nevertheless the real causes 
and the real effects of the rebellion and of the Union have 
scarcely met with the consideration they deserve, though 
the subject is one which deserves and would repay a careful 
study. 

Lord Townsend's administration had thoroughly debased 
the Irish parliament. It has been taken for granted, 
because the Irish Parliament was composed of persons who 






ii^ 



profanity, but by the poet who sings his praise, he was as surely wished 
back again. 

" What spirits were his, what art and what whim, 
Now breaking a jest and now breaking a limb I 



In short, so peculiar a devil was Dick, 

That we wished him well ten times a day at old Nick, 

But missing his mirth and agreeable vein, 

As often we wished to have Dick back again." 



THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 



lived, at least, part of their lives in Ireland, that it repre- 
sented Irish feeling. It is true, indeed, that there were a 
few men in it from time to time who were incorruptible 
and independent, who had Irish interests, and who would 
make sacrifices for them ; but the great majority had no 
interest in Ireland. It was indeed the country from 
whence they drew their rents, and which supplied them 
with their income, but they were aliens from the people in 
religion and in affection. 

English interest was still the ruling motive of every 
enactment of this so-called Irish Parliament ; and yet, 
because the Parliament was Irish, because it had an Irish 
element in it, Ireland prospered during its. later years, as 
Ireland had never prospered before. 

Still the one fatal policy prevailed, and the one fatal 
principle was carried out. Ireland was not treated as an 
integral part of the British Empire. Her interests were 
not even considered for a moment, and if they were con- 
sidered, it was only that they might be treated as some- 
thing absolutely inimical to English prosperity. It was a 
curious policy, it was an unwise policy, it was a fatal policy. 
If one-half the money which was spent in repressing Irish 
rebellions had been spent in promoting Irish industry, 
there would have been no rebellions to repress, and Eng- 
land might have enriched herself, instead of adding a heavy 
item to her national debt, and throwing an additional 
weight of obloquy on her national character. 




But in considering this period of Irisli history, Irishmen 
have sometimes forgotten that the English House of Com- 
mons was quite as venal as that which sat. in Dublin. The 
English nation had been for years, indeed since the very 
first hour of its intercourse with Ireland, educated and 
imbued with an anti-Irish feeling. Even Charles I. dared 
not repeal Poyning's Act, though, by so doing, he had at 
least a chance of saving himself from his English subjects 
by conciliating his Irish subjects. He took in the full 
extent of his position. The Irish were Irish and nothing 
more. He may not, indeed, have deliberately selected to 
be murdered by his English subjects in preference to being 
defended by his Irish subjects ; but undoubtedly he weighed 
the matter carefully, and practically he concluded that, 
though the Irish might be his faithful subjects, they were 
very powerless to protect him against his rebellious sub- 
jects, while there was not one but thousands of Crorn- 
wells in England. Charles I. was right ; he might be 
spared by these blood-thirsty men, but if he sought protec- 
tion from his Irish subjects, these men would effect their 
end sooner or later, and involve him and his defenders in 
one common rnin. 

The conditions of Irish political life before the close of 
the last century were sufficiently ominous, but the condi- 
tions at the close of that century are without parallel in the 
annals of history. 

The American war, or rather the evident probability that 



He) 



the American war would be successful, first, roused up the 
English mind to the necessity, for its own sake, of doing 
something for Ireland. The problem then became how to 
do as little as possible ; unwillingness to do that little made 
it be done as ungraciously as possible. When you fling 
a trifling alms to a relation whom you have systematically 
defrauded, because you fear he may now have it in his 
power to retaliate, you can scarcely expect him to over- 
whelm you with gratitude, or to forget past wrongs. Yet 
the Irish are constantly reproached with being the most 
ungrateful people on the earth because they do not go into 
ecstasies of thankfulness for the smallest instalment of 
justice. Neither individuals nor nations are to he respected 
who sacrifice their personal dignity. 

The American war thus created a necessity for justice, 
aud on the 10th of November 1773, leave was given to 
bring in a bill to secure the repayment of money that 
should be lent by Papists to Protestants on mortgages of 
land, and to show the extra condescension of this act of 
very accurate legal justice, of justice which one might 
suppose could not be denied by one man to another, the 
bill was brought in by Mr Mason, Sir Lucius O'Brien, and 
Mr Langrishe, who were " government men." 

It might be supposed that any body of educated men 
would pass the bill, but it was not passed. 

Leave was also given to bring in a bill to allow Papists to 
take leases of houses and of lands. It might be supposed 




i 



>w 



that at the close of the eighteenth century such a bill would 
certainly pass. It was rejected also. 2 

American affairs began to look still more threatening, 
and on the 5th of March 1774, leave was given to bring in 
a bill to permit Catholic subjects to testify their allegiance 
to their sovereign. This bill was passed, and the Irish 
historian Plowden says : " It gratified the Catholics, inas- 
much as it was a formal recognition that they were sub- 
jects, and to this recognition they looked up as to the corner- 
stone of their future emancipation." 

Emigration to America had already begun. Had there 
been greater facilities the emigration would have been 
greater. What indeed were men to do who were neither 
allowed to live nor to labour, and who were not recognised 
even as subjects until now — who were, even after this 
pitiful recognition, treated virtually as rebels even in time 
of peace ? 3 

2 The animus which existed in all classes of English is strongly shown 
in some of George III.'s letters. He writes thus to Lord North on March 
29, 1776 : " I have, both in the times of Lord Hertford and of Lord 
Townshend, declined making Irish marquises, and 1 have not in the 
least changed my opinion on that subject, I am heartily sick of Lord 
Harcourt's mode of trying step by step to draw me to fulfil his absurd 
requests. I desire I may hear no more of Irish marquises ; I feel for 
the English earls, and do not choose to disgust them." — Correspondence 
of George III., vol. ii. p. 16. It was the same principle of making a dis- 
tinction between English and Irish subjects which made James I. cry 
out, " Spare my English subjects," when the Irish were fighting for him 
to the death. 

3 We find George III. writing in a specially contemptuous style of his 






W 



122 THE REBELLION A PROTESTANT MO VEMENT. 



How completely the rebellion of 1793 was a Protestant 
movement has never been clearly understood. It is true, 
indeed, the great mass of those who rose were Catholics, 
but that was simply because the Catholics formed an over- 
whelming majority of the population. The leaders were 
Protestants ; and how this came about we shall proceed to 
show. 

Trade was permitted spasmodically in the north of 
Ireland, because the people in the north of Ireland were 
principally Protestants, and were many of them of Scotch 
and French descent. But this by no means saved them 
from the ill-judged, miserable policy of their English rulers. 
The volunteer movement began in Belfast, and Cork, which 






m\ 



American subjects, until they proclaimed their independence. In a 
letter dated July 4, 1774, he writes very boldly of "compulsion;" the 
English " lyons " however got the worst of it : — " Since you left me this 
day, I have seen Lieutenant General Gage, who came to express his 
readiness, though so lately come from America, to return at a day's 
notice, if the conduct of the Colonies should induce the directing coercive 
measures. His language was very consonant to his character of an 
honest determined man. He says they will be lyons whilst we are 
lambs ; but, if we take the resolute part, they will undoubtedly prove 
very meek. He thinks the four regiments intended to relieve as many 
regiments in America, if sent to Boston, are sufficient to prevent any dis- 
turbance. I wisli you would see him, and hear his ideas as to the mode 
of compelling Boston to submit to whatever may be thought necessary ; 
indeed, all men seem now to feel that the fatal compliance in 1766 has 
encouraged the Americans annually to increase in their pretensions to 
that thorough independency which one state has of another, but which 
is quite subversive of the obedience which a colony owes to its mother 
country." — Correspondence, vol. i. p. 36. 




JEALOUSY OF IRISH TRADE. 123 

was then an ultra-Protestant city, supplied two of the lead- 
ing spirits of the rebellion in the persons of the Shearses. 

Both Cork and Belfast suffered most severely from English 
laws, made to restrain, or, to speak more accurately, to ruin 
Irish trade. 4 



4 Sir William Temple wrote thus in 1673 : " Regard must be had to 
those points wherein the trade of Ireland comes to interfere with that of 
England, in which case the Irish trade ought to be declined, so as to give 
waj' to the trade of England." 

A pamphlet on trade, published in London, 1727, apologises for op- 
posing what it states as " the universally received opinion that it were 
better for England if Ireland were no more ! " And the writer grounds 
this opposition on his conviction that such are Ireland's natural advan- 
tages for commerce, that her trade would increase greatly if the restric- 
tions then existing were taken off; and the consequence would be, that 
" the drafts of England upon her would be increased, and the greater part 
of Ireland's gains by trade would centre in England ! " 

Anderson, in his " History of Commerce," openly declares the English 
jealousy of Irish commercial enterprise. Coombe, who continued An- 
derson's work, comments with rather too considerate, but still a decided 
tone of censure, on the oppressive and tyrannous line of conduct adopted 
in consequence of that jealousy. 

Arthur Young, in 1776, wrote thus : " British legislation, on all oc- 
casions, controlled Irish commerce with a very high hand — universally 
on the principle of monopoly, as if the poverty of Ireland were her 
wealth." 

Pitt in 1785 bore the same testimony ; and again in 1799. On the 
latter occasion, he said : " Ireland long felt the narrow policy of Great 
Britain, who, influenced by views of commercial advantage, and stained 
with selfish motives, never looked on her prosperity as that of the empire 
at large." 

Mr Huskisson, in 1825, added his testimony to the same effect : — 

" Till 1 780 the agriculture, internal industry, manufactures, commerce, 
and navigation of Ireland, were held in the most rigid subserviency to 
the supposed interests of Great Britain. In 1778 there was a proposal to 






THE VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT. 



In 1759 the Belfast people were obliged to arm them- 
selves in self-defence, and the English Government was 
obliged to permit, and even to encourage this movement, to 
prevent the French landing in Ireland. Three companies 
of volunteers were formed, and the spirit of the Irish was 
roused for the first time during the past half century. 
Volunteer companies started up everywhere, but this ar- 
rangement did not suit the English Government. It is 
true, indeed, that these volunteers were all Protestants, but 
Protestants were quite as likely to use their arms against 
oppression as Catholics, and even more so. The Lord- 
Lieutenant was requested to put down the movement, but 
it was not easy to do so. 

In 1779, when Protestant discontent became still more 

formidable, the Lord-Lieutenant wrote to Lord Weymouth 

on this subject : — 

'■The seizing their arms would, therefore, be a violent expedient ; 
and the preventing them from assembling, without a military 
force, impracticable : for when the civil magistrate will rarely 
attempt to seize an offender suspected of the most enormous 
crimes, and when convicted, convey him to the place of execution 
without soldiers, — nay, when, in many instances, persons cannot 



let her import sugar direct, and export all but woollens, to pay for it ; 
and this proposal was almost made a question of allegiance by the great 
towns of Great Britain, and so lost ! But towards the close of that year 
the disasters in America, and the state of things in Ireland, produced a 
d iff rent feeling in the British Parliament. State necessities, acting under 
a sense of political danger, yielded, without grace, that which good senst 
and good feeling had before recommended in cuin I" 



IRISH GRIEVANCES. 



be put into possession of their property, nor, being possessed, 
maintain it without such assistance, — there is little presumption 
in asserting that unless bodies of troops be universally dispersed, 
nothing can be done to effect." 



Nevertheless the Irish Protestants were so infatuated, 
or so ignorant, as not to see that their true interest lay in 
union with the Catholics, that a nation divided against 
itself could no more prosper than a divided family. 

In May 1778, a hill was brought in to permit Catholics 
to hold land, and was fiercely petitioned against by the 
Protestant party. It was necessary, however, for Govern- 
ment to conciliate the Catholics, so the hill passed by a 
small majority. But nothing was done for the benefit of 
trade. Poverty and destitution reigned supreme. Ireland 
was forbidden commerce, was obliged to pay tithes to a 
Church which she abhorred, and to support the priests of 
her own religion. She was compelled to pay taxes for 
the maintenance of a military force to compel her to remain 
silent under her cruel wrongs, and to support au army for 
the subjugation of the only country from which she had any 
hope of redress. 

England began to he alarmed. There were certainly 
some few men of the realm with sufficient common sense to 
see the fatuity of the present course of Irish government ; 
amongst the number were Lord Newhaven and the Marquis 
of Rockingham. 

Lord Temple, who held the unenviable post of Lord-Lieu- 



I 



"FREE TRADE— OR THIS." 



tenant in Ireland, proposed a committee to inquire into the 
distress of the nation. But the nation was tired of pro- 
mises, and on the 4th of Novemher 1778, the volunteers 
paraded Dublin. They had two field-pieces with them, and 
bearing a significant inscription — 

" Free Tkade — or this." 

The result was that an act allowing free trade between 
Ireland and the British Colonies received the royal assent 
on the 24th of July 1780. 

This concession was obtained merely by the physical force 
argument of the volunteers. On the 24th of November 
1779, Grattan moved in the House of Commons that it was 
then inexpedient to grant new taxes. Ireland was plunged 
in the deepest and most abject poverty through no fault of 
her own, and England asked new subsidies from this nation 
which she had herself deprived of all means of enrichment! 

The motion was carried by a majority of over one hundred; 
and on the following day the opposition resolved, by a 
majority of one hundred and thirty-eight to one hundred, 
that the new duties should be for six months only. Dur- 
ing the debate, when Mr Brough the prime serjeant ex- 
claimed, " Talk not to me of peace. Ireland is not in a 
state of peace, it is smothered over," — the house, thrilled to 
the core, rose in a body to cheer him. 5 Certainly there was 



5 Life uf Grattan, vol. L eh. 17 ; Memoirs of the Court of George III. 



G RAT TAX. 



some public spirit in Ireland tlien, and the man who 
evoked that spirit, who gave it body and active life, was 
Grattan. 

His father had been recorder of Dublin for many years, 
and he was therefore initiated into Irish politics from his 
very childhood. He was endowed by nature with great 
gifts of eloquence, and with that noble spirit of justice 
without which eloquence is a curse, for it only leads men, 
not indeed to admire, but to practise tyranny. During his 
early life he spent much of his time at Marley Abbey, the 
residence of his uncle, where he learned to admire the writ- 
ings of Swift, and in some degree imbibed their spirit. 

Grattan entered Parliament as member for Lord Charle- 
mont's borough of Charlemont, situated on the borders of 
Armagh and Tyrone. He was then in his thirtieth year. 
Whatever may be said of electoral intimidation in the pre- 
sent age, of close or open, of rotten or honest, of saleable or 
unsaleable boroughs, there is nothing even faintly approach- 
ing the state of parliamentary representation at the close of 
the eighteenth century. The process of election was simple, 
and, after all, it had the merit of simplicity. The lord of the 
soil was the lord of the tenant's parliamentary conscience. 
There was no doubt about the matter — no question about 
the matter. He sent down the candidate of his choice ; 
whether that choice was directed by political or pecuniary 
motives, mattered little. It was nothing to the free and 
independent electors certainly. They knew their duty, and 



HJ 



they did it. If they failed God might help them, but there 
was no help from man. 

To have granted the lord of the soil the unlimited right 
of returning a member for his borough, would have saved a 
good deal of trouble, a good deal of expense, and a good 
deal of bitterness, but the arrangement does not seem to 
have been thought of, and certainly it would have looked 
unconstitutional. After all there is nothing like making a 
sham look- legal and respectable. Men like Grattan got 
into Parliament now and then, when there were men like 
Lord Charlemont to nominate them ; but there were not 
many Lord Charlemonts in Ireland, and certainly there 
were not many Grattans. 

Lord Charlemont's conversion to Irish nationality, such 
as it was, arose from an open expression of English con- 
tempt for Lish peeresses. The whole affair is curious and 
instructive. 

A grand procession of peers and peeresses was arranged 
to meet the unfortunate Princess Caroline, but, before the 
Princess landed, the Duchess of Bedford was commanded to 
inform the Irish peeresses that they were neither to walk 
nor take any part in the procession. It was carrying out 
the trite saying, " No Irish need apply," in high life. 

This might be done with impunity and with approbation 
where the lower classes of Irish were concerned, but the 
peeresses resented it. Lord Charlemont had spent seven 
years abroad, and was not accustomed to the unedifying 



LORD CHARLEMONT. 



spectacle of a nation divided against itself — of one half 
of the body politic despising the other half. He warmly 
reseuted the insult, and by his efforts obtained a reversal of 
the order. But he did not forget it. For a time at least 
he took part with the oppressed nation to which he be- 
longed, but it was only for a time. The tide of public 
opinion in his own rank in life set strongly against him. 
Neither Ireland nor Irish politics were fashionable. It was 
well to be a peer certainly, even though he might be an 
Irish peer; but the less Irish he appeared, the more he would 
be respected by his fellows. What indeed were popular 
laudations in comparison with the approbation of his own 
immediate circle ? 

On the 27th of March 1782, Charles Sheridan wrote 
thus to his brother Richard : — 

" As to our politics here, I send you a newspaper ; read the 
resolutions of the volunteers, and you will be enabled to form 
some idea of the spirit which pervades the country. A declara- 
tion of the dependency of our Parliament upon yours will cer- 
tainly pass our House of Commons immediately after the recess. 
Government here dare not, cannot oppose it : you will see the 
volunteers have pledged their lives and fortunes in support of the 
measure, the grand juries of every county have followed their 
example, and some of the staunchest friends of Government have 
been, much against their inclination, compelled to sign the most 
spirited resolutions." e 

The volunteer movement, as we have said, began in 



6 Life of Grattan, vol. ii. p. 214. 





Belfast; when the necessity was over, the corps were dis- 
nded; but they refused in 1778, when there were again 
reports and fears of a French invasion. 

In January 1779, Lord Charlemont assumed the com- 
mand of the Armagh volunteers. The Government did not 
like it. They had a choice of evils. Protection against a 
foreign foe was needed, hut there were grave fears lest the 
protectors against a foreign foe might turn out domestic 
enemies. The English were thoroughly aware of the state 
of Irish feeling, though they took no pains to reconcile it. 
In May 1779, Lord Rockingham wrote thus to Lord 
Weymouth : — 

"Upon receiving official intimation that the enemy meditated 
an attack upon the northern parts of Ireland, the inhabitants of 
Belfast and Carrickfergus, as Government amid not immediately 
afford a greater force for their protection limn about sixty troopers. 
armed themselves, and by degrees formed themselves into two or 
three companirs ; the spirit diffused itself into different parts of 
the kingdom, and the numbers became considerable, hut in no 
degree to the amount represented. Discouragement /<"■•>•, however, 
been given on my part, as fir us might I"- without offence, at a crisis 
when the arm and good-will of every individual might have' been 
wanting for the defence of the state." 

The volunteers were in fact working up the country with 
a steady energy, with a quiet determination, that must have 
been terribly embarrassing to the Government. Those 
who thought at all, who looked ever so little beyond the 
narrow sphere of their self-interest, asked themselves what 
would be the end of all this ? 



IV— s>rL"i-^^^ ■*•» 



SPIRITED RESOLUTIONS. 



It was impossible to raise a " No Popery!" cry against 
them, however desirable, for they were all Protestants, 
and, being Protestants, though they were Irish, they could 
scarcely be shot down like dogs. Moreover, they were 
headed by men of high respectability, by men of rank 
and position. When they met at Dungannon,on the 15th 
of February 1782, Colonel Irvine took the chair, and 
the following are but a few of the names of those who 
signed the resolutions: — Viscount, Enniskillen, Colonel 
Mervyn Archdall, Colonel William Irvine, Colonel Hubert 
M'Clintock, Colonel John Ferguson, Colonel John Mont- 
gomery, Colonel Charles Leslie, Colonel Francis Lucas, 
Colonel Thomas M. Jones, Colonel James Hamilton, 
Colonel Andrew Thomson, Lieutenant-Colonel C. Nesbitt, 
Lieutenant-Colonel A. Stewart, Major James Patterson, 
Major Francis Dobbs, Major James M'Clintock. 

The following are some of the resolutions ; we do 
not give them all, because of their length, our present 
object being merely to give a general outline of the 
state of Ireland when O'C'onnell commenced his public 
career : — - 

" Whereas, it has been asserted that volunteers, as such, can- 
not with propriety debate, or publish their opinions on political 
subjects, or on the conduct of Parliament or political men. 

" Resolved, unanimously, That a citizen by learning the use of 
arms does not abandon any of his civil rights. 

"Resolved, unanimously, That a claim of any body of men, 
other than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, to make 



"•Ai'*L^^ 



laws to bind this kingdom, is unconstitutional, illegal, and a 
grievance. 

" Resolved, with one dissenting voice only, That the powers 
exercised by the Privy Councils of both kingdoms, under, or under 
colour or pretence of, the law of Poyning's, are unconstitutional, 
and a grievance. 

" Resolved, unanimously, That the ports of this country are by 
right open to all foreign countries not at war with the king ; and 
that any burden thereupon, or obstruction thereto, save only 
by the Parliament of Ireland, is unconstitutional, illegal, and a 
grievance 

"Resolved, with two dissenting voices only to this and the 
following resolution, That we hold the right of private judgment, 
in matters of religion, to be equally sacred in others as ourselves. 

" Resolved, therefore, That as men and as Irishmen, as Chris- 
tians and as Protestants, we rejoice in the relaxation of the penal 
laws against our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and that we 
conceive the measure to be fraught with the happiest conse- 
quences to the union and prosperity of the inhabitants of 
Ireland " 

The two last resolutions are noteworthy. For the first 
time Protestants seem to have obtained some glimmering 
light on the subject of religious liberty. It was a new 
discovery ; yet one should think it ought to have been an 
established axiom* that " the right of private judgment in 
religious matters," if it existed at all, must exist equally 
for all. The relaxation of the penal code was but a neces- 
sary consequence of this conclusion ; the entire removal of 
every disability — social, political, or domestic — would be 
but the natural end. 

Burke thus describes the pitiful concessions which were 






ON RELAXING THE PENAL CODE. 



the result. His observations might be studied with advan- 
tage even at the present day. Liberal-minded, or to speak 
more correctly, large-minded Protestants need to be re- 
minded of Ireland's past grievances, of the terrible strug- 
gles which she was obliged to make in order to obtain even 
the most trifling act of justice. Those who are prejudiced 
might perhaps lessen their prejudice, if they have not suffi- 
cient intellect to discard them by studying the argu- 
ment of one of England's most famous senators, though his 
birth was Irish : — 



" To look at the bill in the abstract, it is neither more nor less 
than a renewed act of universal, unmitigated, indispensable, ex- 
ceptionless disqualification. One would imagine that a bill in- 
flicting such a multitude of incapacities, had followed on the heels 
of a conquest made by a very fierce enemy, under the impression 
of recent animosity and resentment. No man, on reading that 
bill, could imagine that he was reading an act of amnesty and 
indulgence. This I say on memory. It recites the oath, and 
that Catholics ought to be considered as good and loyal subjects 
to his majesty, his crown, and government; then follows a uni- 
versal exclusion of those good and loyal subjects from every, 
even the lowest office of trust and profit, or from any vote at an 
election; from any privilege in a town corporate; from being 
even a freeman of such corporations ; from serving on grand 
juries ; from a vote at a vestry ; from having a gun in his house ; 
from being a barrister, attorney, solicitor, &c, &c, &c. 

" This has surely more of the air of a table of proscriptions 
than an act of grace. What must we suppose the laws concern- 
ing those good subjects to have been of which this is a relaxa 
tion ? When a very great portion of the labour of individuals 
goes to the State, and is by the State again refunded to indi- 



viduals through the medium of offices, and in this circuitous pro- 
cress from the public to the private fund, indemnifies the families 
from whom it is taken, an equitable balance between the Govern- 
ment and the subject is established. But if a great body of the 
people who contribute to this State lottery, are excluded from all 
the prizes, the stopping the circulation with regard to them must 
be a most cruel hardship, amounting in effect to being double and 
treble taxed, and will be felt as such to the very quick by all the 
families, high and low, of those hundreds of thousands who are 
denied their chance in the returned fruits of their own industry. 
This is the thing meant by those who look on the public revenue 
only as a spoil ; and will naturally wish to have as few as possi- 
ble concerned in the division of the booty. If a State should bo 
so unhappy as to think it cannot subsist without such a barbarous 
proscription, the persons so proscribed ought to be indemnified 
ly the remission of a large part of their taxes, by an immunity 
from the offices of public burden, and by an exemption from 
being pressed into any military or naval service. Why are 
Catholics excluded from the law? Do not they expend money in 
their suits I Why may not they indemnify themselves by profit- 
ing in the persons of some for the losses incurred by others ? 
Why may they not have persons of confidence, -whom they may, 
if they please, employ in the agency of their affairs? The ex- 
clusion from the law, from -ran. I juries, from sheriffships, under- 
sheriffships, as well as from freedom in any corporation, may 
subject them to dreadful hardships, as it may exclude them 
wholly from all that is beneficial, and expose them to all that is 
mischievous in a trial by jury." 



Grattan exclaimed — 

"So long as the penal code remains, we never can be a great 
nation ; the penal code is the shell in which the Protestant 
power has been hatched, and now it is become a bird, it must 
burst the shell asunder, or perish in it. I give my consent to the 



J* <*; *-..rJfyT, 



LORD CllARLEMONT'S LETTER. 



cleanse in its principle, extent, and boldness, and give my consent 
to it as the most likely means of obtaining a victory over the 
prejudices of Catholics, and over our own. I give my consent to 
it, because I would not keep two millions of my fellow-subjects in 
a state of slavery ; and because, as the mover of the Declaration 
of Rights, I .should be ashamed of giving freedom to but six 
hundred thousand of my countrymen, when I could extend it to 
two millions more." 

The state of Ireland was causing general alarm in Eng- 
land. Lord Charlemont wrote to Mr Fox the bold words : 
ii I aman Irishman; I pride myself inthe appellation." 1 The 



7 We give a considerable portion of Lord Charlemont's letter. The 
original may be found both in Hardy's " Lite of Lord Charlemont," and 
in the Fox Correspondence : — 

"Dublin, nth April, 1782. 

"No man can be more rejoiced than T am at this late happy, though 
tardy, change. I rejoice in it as a friend to individuals, but more espe- 
cially as a member of the empire at large, which will probably be indebted 
to it for its salvation. I hope also, and doubt not, that I shall have. 
reason to rejoice in it as an Irishman, for I cannot conceive that they 
who are intent upon the great work of restoring the empire, should not 
be ardently attentive to the real welfare of all its parts ; or that true 
WMgs, genuine lovers of liberty, whose principles 1 know, honour, and 
strive to imitate, should not wish to diffuse this invaluable blessing 
through every part of those dominions whose interests they are called 
upon to administer. The appointment of the Duke, of Portland, and oi 
his secretary, is a good presage. I know and respect their principles, and 

should he truly unhappy if anything in their conduct respecting this 
country should prevent my perfect co-operation with them. For, my 
dear sir, with every degree of affection for our sister kingdom, with 
every regard for the interests of the empire at large, I am an Irishman ; 
I pride myself in the appellation, and will in every particular ad as such, 
at the same time declaring that I most sincerely and heartily concill 
with you in thinking that the interests of England and of Ireland can- 



KIMiLIXG 



volunteers were feared certainly, but the spirit which the 
volunteers had evoked was feared, and should have been 
feared a great deal more. Irishmen had ,been so long 
treated as inferiors, that they had begun to acquiesce in this 
treatment, passively at least. 

Their new assertion that they were men who had rights, 
their new perception that it needed only a little force, moral 
and physical, to obtain these rights, roused the spirit of 
the nation. 

Mr Fox discovered very clearly some of the evils of Irish 



not be distinct ; and that, therefore, in acting as an Irishman, I may 
always hope to perform the part of a true Englishman also. 

" I have shown your letter to Grattan, and he is much gratified by your 
friendly opinion of him. We are both of us precisely of the same mind. 
We respect and honour the present administration. We adore the 
principle on which it'is founded. We look up to its members with the 
utmost confidence for their assistance in the great work of general free- 
dom, and should be happy in our turn to have it in our power to support 
them in Ireland in the manner which may be most beneficial to them, 
and most honourable to us ; consulted but not considered. The people 
at large must indeed entertain a partiality for the present ministers. 
True Whigs must rejoice at the prevalence of Whiggish principles. The 
nation wishes to support the favourers of American freedom, the men 
who opposed the detested, the execrated American war. Let our rights 
be acknowledged and secured to us — those rights which no man can con- 
trovert, but which to a true Whiff are self-evident — and that nation, 
those lives and fortunes which are now universally pledged for the 
emancipation of our country, will be as cheerfully, as universally pledged 
for the defence of our sister kingdom, and for the support of an adminis- 
tration which will justly claim the gratitude of a spirited and grateful 
people, by having contributed to the completion of all their wishes. — I 
am, &c, 



" Charlemont." 



administration. He wrote thus to Mr Fitzpatrick, who was 

chief secretary, on the 13th April 1782: — 

" He [the Duke of Leinster] describes the want of concert and 
system which fumes from the want of such a thing [a cabinet] to 
be very detrimental in every respect, and particularly in parlia- 
mentary operations, where those who wish to support Government 
often do not know till the moment what is the plan proposed, 
and consequently are wholly unable to support it either system- 
atically or effectually. Another great inconvenience, which he 
attributes to this want, is that the Lord-Lieutenant, not having 
any regular ministry to apply to, is driven, or at least led, to con- 
sult Lees and such sort of inferior people, and by that means the 
whole power is (as it was here) centered in the Jenkinsons and Ro- 
binsons, &c, of that country. Nobody is responsible but the Lord- 
Lieutenant and his secretary ; they know they are to go away, 
and consequently all the mischiefs ensue that belong to a govern- 
ment without responsibility. I have not talked with anybody 
upon this, nor indeed had time to think it over myself, but it 
really strikes me as a matter very well worth weighing, and 1 
wish the Duke of Portland and you would turn your mind- to it. 
especially if, as I take for granted, this idea was suggested to the 
Duke of Leinster by other considerable men on your side of the 
water. I have only stated it to you as it strikes me, upon first 
hearing the thing broached." 8 

It was an old story. The Lord-Lieutenant merely looked 

on his post as a place of emolument or a dignity. Ireland 

was nothing to him. How should it be, when his residence 

in that country might terminate at any moment, when he 



8 Correspondence of Charles James Fox, vol. L p. 387. — The editor of 
that work observes : " It is cifl'ious to see the question of ' responsible 
government' started in Ireland more than half a century before it was 
a watchword in Canada.'' 



had no power to do good if he wished, and would have even 
scant thanks from his masters for doing it had he been 
able? 

The position was anything but a pleasant one. We 
shall see later on what another viceroy thought on the 
subject. At this time there was undoubtedly a system of 
espionage. Letters were opened, it was said, by the crea- 
tures of the late administration. 

Mr Fitzpatrick wrote to Mr Fox to warn liim : — 

" Dublin Castle, April 17th, 1782. 
" Dear Charles, — I shall begin my letter with giving you a 
caution concerning the communication of its contents too generally 
on your side of the water, and with another, respecting the con- 
fidential letters you write me, which you had better never trust to 
the post, as we have the misfortune of being here in the hands of 
the tools of the last Government, and there is every reason to 
suspect that our letters may be opened before they reach us. I 
wish you, therefore, to trust them only in the hands of mes- 
sengers." 9 






w 



9 There are some amusing remarks about G rattan in this letter : " But 
what appears to me the worst of all is, that unless the heat of the volun- 
teers subsides, I dread Grattan's. For though everybody seems to agree 
that he is honest, I am sure he is an enthusiast, and impracticable as the 
most impracticable of our friends in the Westminster Committee. His 
situation is enough to turn the head of any man fond of popular 
applause, but the brilliancy of it can only subsist by carrying points in 
opposition to Government ; and though he chose to make a comparison 
yesti rday between Ireland and America, giving the preference to his 
own country, I confess I think the wise, temperate, systematic conduct 
of the other, if adopted by Ireland, would bring all these difficulties to a 
very short and happy conclusion, to the satisfaction and advantage of 



4&S 



!l 



tmM 



On the 19tli of July 1783, Lord Temple wrote a similar 
complaint to Mr Beresford: — 

" It is probable that this letter will sliare the fate which many 
others have experienced, and as I do not mean to write for the 
information of the post-office, I will only say that I still take that 
eager interest in the government of Ireland which will make me 
cordially rejoice in the success of a wise and temperate govern- 
ment ; but I have not the smallest objection to the publication of 
my opinion, that as far as your administration depends upon 
English ministers, it will not be wise, temperate, or consistent, 
and that every scene to which I have been a witness since my 
arrival in England has confirmed me in my opinions, under which 
I resigned the government, which I could not hold with advan- 
tage to the empire and honour to myself." 

On the 13th of October 1783, he wrote:— 

" The shameful liberties taken with my letters, both sent and 
received (for even the Speaker's letter to me had been opened), 
make me cautious on politics ; but you, who know me, will be- 
lieve that I am most deeply anxious for the events of this Irish 
session, and with every disposition to loathe and execrate our 
English ministry, even with the certainty that their measures, 
their abilities, and their intentions are little proportioned to the. 
exigencies of the State, I am still too warmly anxious for the. 
peace and unity of the empire not to wish to Government in 
Ireland every success in the arduous task of this winter." 

It was no wonder that Ireland was discontented. The 



both parties. Lord Slielburne's speech gives great satisfaction here, and 
probably if there had been any chance of soothing this country into 
moderation, would have done infinite mischief. It is curious enough 
that while he is recommending us to support the authority of England 
more than we either can or, I think, ought to do, he should he declaring 
in the Honse of Lords that the claims of Ireland must be acceded to." 



private correspondence of the times between those who pro- 
fessed to govern her, afford ample evidence that while they 
disagreed totally as to how she should be governed, they 
agreed thoroughly that she should not be allowed a voice 
in her own government ; above all, that she should not be 
allowed prosperity, commercial or otherwise. 

Men asked in one breath, " What did Ireland want ? 
and what were her grievances?" but when she told them, 
they were flung aside with contempt, or silenced by force. 

If any man dared to speak for her, and boldly proclaim 
her wrongs, he was a malcontent; if any man ventured 
to suggest physical force, he was a rebel. America was 
quoted to her quite as a model theoretically, but practi- 
cally we all know the result when she attempted to follow 
this example. 

The truth was, England did not choose to listen. What 
were the most cogent arguments to her, when she had 
formed her resolve, and did not intend to alter it? Grattan 
told her in plain, clear, unmisrepresentable language what 
Ireland did not want, and what she did want. She did not 
want "a foreign judicature;" English rule in Ireland 
was no better. The Englishmen who ruled Ireland did 
not consider it their home, much less did they consider it 
their fatherland, which they should honour, for whose 
prosperity they should work, heart and soul. The one 
question with them was, not what will benefit Ireland, but 
what will benefit England. When an act of the commonest 



SCORN OF IRISH DEMANDS. 



justice was proposed for Ireland, the first observation was 
not, We must grant it — it is justice; but, Will it ever in 
the least interfere with English interests? This is no mere 
assertion. There is ample jiroof of it. 

Ireland was told to be " reasonable," which meant that 
she was to be thankful for such little permission to trade 
as certainly could not divert a ship-load of any manufac- 
ture from England, even by the remotest possibility. 

If concessions were asked, the petition was quietly 
shelved. If they were demanded, it was considered an 
insult, and an ample reason for refusing them. 

If the interests of a great realm were not, concerned, 
if the interests of men who were equals were not con- 
cerned, one could afford to smile at such folly. It was 
a schoolboy axiom carried out by great men in politi- 
cal life. If you will not ask, how can we know what 
you want? if you do ask, be assured you shall not get 
what you ask. There was evermore something wrong in 
that which was asked for, or in the manner of the 
asking. Practically it mattered little, for the result was 
just the same. 1 



1 Sir Richard Heron wrote thus to Mr Robinson from Dublin Castle 
on the- 20th August 1 7 7 1> : "The unusual sum of money now wan toil, 
the low state of the revenue, and the general distress of the kingdom, 
considered together, give great reason to apprehend a very difficult ses- 
sion. It will, however, be my Lord-Lieutenant's utmost endeavour that 
the affairs of this kingdom may embarrass his Majesty and his British 
servants as little as possible." — Beresford Correspondence, vol. i. p. 47. 




A PUZZLE PAST COMPREHENSION. 

Meanwhile the state of the country was becoming daily 
worse. Ireland was to be allowed only the " gleanings" 2 
of commerce, though her worst enemies admitted she could 
not live on them ; she was to be " reasonable," 3 though 
the same persons declared the kingdom was in such a dis- 
tress, it " puzzled 4 all [English] comprehension " what it 
might do. 

2 " Ireland is certainly a great kingdom ; but the idea of its supporting, 
upon tlie gleanings of commerce (for such only it can carry on during a 
war), its continual drains to Great Britain, and a military establishment 
sufficient to defend itself, is certainly ill-founded. Prepare, therefore, 
to give handsomely, but upon proper terms, some material extension of 
their commerce. Whatever commerce this kingdom carries on legally 
will prejudice yours less than their carrying it on, as they have hitherto 
done, illicitly." — Letter of Sir Richard Heron to Mr Robinson, August 20, 
1779. 

3 " That no extension (by trade) of any value can be given without the 
exertion of Government, nor without occasioning great discontent in 
many parts of England ; and, therefore, unless Ireland is likely to be 
satisfied with reasonable extensions, they may be assured his Majesty's 
servants will preserve good-humour at home by not giving their suppwrt 
to any, and that the gentlemen of this country will have the ill humours 
they excite to pacify, or the kingdom will go into a state of confusion, 
which cannot but have very serious consequences to all gentlemen who 
possess property here." — Beresford Correspondence, vol. i. p. 50. 

4 " This kingdom is in such a state as puzzles all comprehension as to 
what it may do : a multitude of idlers miserably poor ; a debt, small as 
it is, without a shilling to pay interest ; the skeleton of a force not in 
his Majesty's service, which it may be difficult to deal, or madness to 
meddle with ; taxes to be imposed, and no material for imposition; a 
great deal of ignorance ; a great deal of prejudice ; a most over- 
grown hierarchy, and a most oppressed peasantry; property by some 
late determinations of the Lords upon covenants lor perpetual renewals 
of lease., very much set at sea, and no means to a multitude of families 



W2? 




Ireland did not want a " foreign judicature." She 
wanted an impartial administration, and that could not be 
given to her hy men whose one idea was not justice, 
.hut English interests. She did not want a " legis- 
lative Privy Council," nor a " perpetual army." The 
"perpetual army" for which she was compelled to pay 



to supply its place ; rents fallen, and a general disposition to riot and 
mischief." — Letter from the Attorney-General to Mr Robinson, dated Har- 
court Street, Dublin, April 13, 1779. The Attorney-General was created 
Earl of Clonmel in 1793. He was a clever but utterly unscrupulous 
politician, and by no means choice in his language. He certainly had 
little respect for the Protestant Church, of which he was a member. 

Rowan's " Autobiography " records a strange dialogue between Lord 
Clonmel and a bookseller named Byrne, whose shop he visited on seeing 
Rowan's trial advertised. One sentence will convey an idea of the col- 
loquy, as well as of the times in which such language could be hazarded 
by a judge. " Take care, sir, what you do ; I give you this caution ; 
for if there are any reflections on the judges of the land, by the eternal 
G — I will lay you by the heels." 

Lord Clonmel's health and spirits gradually broke down, and accounts 
of his death were daily circulated. On one of these occasions, when he 
was really very ill, a friend said to Curran, " Well, they say Clonmel is 
going to die at last. Do you believe it?" "I believe," said Curran, 
" he is scoundrel enough to live or die, just as it suits his own con- 
venience!" Shortly before the death of Lord Clonmel, Mr Lawless, 
afterwards Lord Cloncurry, had an interview with him, when the chief 
exclaimed, "My dear Val, I have been a fortunate man through life ; I 
am a chief-justice and an earl : but were I to begin the world again, 
I would rather be a chimney-sweeper, than connected with the Irish 
Government." 

His family published his diary for private circulation. It is an 
amusing and not very edifying production. For fuller accounts of him, see 
" The Sham Squire, or the Reformers of '98," — a most curious and inter- 
esting work, giving details never before published of the state of Ireland 




was a necessary consequence of the "foreign judicature." 5 
She asked "nothing but what was essential to her liberty," 
and she heard this powerful argument enforced by one of 
the best and ablest of her sons. She only asked what- 



at this eventful period. Lord Clomnel, it is stated, enriched himself by 
a gross breach of trust, which, however, was then perfectly legal. It 
would appear that the lady whom he defended was his own step- 
daughter. 

The author of " The Sham Squire " was informed by a very respectable 

solicitor, Mr H , that in looking over Lord Clonmel's rental-, he 

was struck by the following note written by his lordship's agent, in 
reference to the property Brolnaduff. " Lord Clonniel, when Mr 
Scott, held this in trust for a Roman Catholic, who, owing to the opera- 
tion of the Popery laws, was incapacitated from keeping it in his own 
hands. When reminded of the trust. Mr Scott refused to acknowledge 
i% and thus the property fell into tin- Clonmel family." The key to 
this is found in a paragraph in Walker's Hibernian Magazine for July 
1797. We read, p. 97, — " Edward Byrne of Mullinahack, Esq., to Miss 
Hoe, step-daughter to the Earl of Clonmel, and niece to Lord Viscount 
Llandalf." Hereby hangs a tale. Miss Roe was understood to have a 
large fortune, and. when Mr Byrne applied to Lord Channel for it, his 
lordship shuffled, saying, " Miss Roe is a lapsed Papist, and I avail 
myself of the laws which I administer to withhold the money." Mr 
Byrne filed a bill, in which he recited the evasive reply of Lord Clon- 
mel. The chief-justice never answered the bill, and treated Mr Byrne's 
remonstrances witli contempt. These facts transpire in the legal docu- 
ments held by Mr H . Too often the treachery manifested by the 

rich in positions of trust, at the calamitous period in question, contrasted 
curiously with the tried fidelity observed by som<- needy persons in a 
similar capacity. Moore, in his " Memoirs of Captain Rock," mentions 
the case of a poor Protestant barber, who, though his own property did 
not exceed a few pounds in value, actually held in fee the estates of 
most of the Catholic gentry of the county. He adds, that this estimable 
man was never known to betray his trust." 

See Grattau's Letter, at the end of this chapter. 



UNCONDITIONAL CONCESSIONS. 145 

Englishmen considered indispensable for themselves. The 
burden of proof lay on them. They were bound to show, 
if they could, why they denied Ireland that justice which 
was the pride and boast of their own country. 

Mr Fox wrote a politely evasive reply. He assured Mr 
Grrattan that he .considered Irish affairs "very import- 
ant," but that it would be " imprudent " to meddle with 
them. Efe wrote the usual platitudes about ardent wishes 
to satisfy both countries. He probably knew as well, or 
better, than any living man that he could not satisfy both 
countries, so long as justice to Ireland was considered 
injustice to England. 

Mr Fox wrote a private letter at the same time to 
Mr Fitzpatrick, in which he said that his answer to 
Grattan's letter was " perfectly general," 6 which was per- 
fectly true. 

The result, however, was favourable. Grattan's appeal 
was considered and accepted. The Act of the 6th George I., 
entitled, "An Act for the Better Securing the Dependency 
of Ireland upon the Crown of Great Britain," was repealed. 

On the 27th of May 1782, when the Irish Houses met, 
after an adjournment of three weeks, the Duke of Portland 
announced the unconditional concessions which had been 
made to Ireland by the English Parliament. Mr Grattan in- 
terpreted the concession in the fullest sense, and moved an 



6 Correspondence of Charles James Fox. 



);? 



EL 



', ^ 



( t 



146 



IRISH GRATITUDE. 



address, " breathing the generous sentiments of his noble 
and confiding nature." Sir Flood and a few other mem- 
bers took a different and more cautious view of the case. 
They wished for something more than a simple repeal of the 
Act of the 6th George I., and they demanded an express 
declaration that England would not interfere with Irish 
affairs. But the address was carried by a division of 211 
to 2 ; and the House, to show its gratitude, voted that 
20,000 Irish seamen should be raised for the British navy, 
at a cost of £100,000, and that £50,000 should be given to 
purchase an estate and build a house for Mr Grattan, whose 
eloquence had contributed so powerfully to obtain what 
they hoped would prove justice to Ireland. 

If even a small majority of the Irish Parliament had 
been men whose interests were Irish, there is no doubt that 
Ireland would have prospered. Even as it was, the last 
years of her nominal independence were her best years. 

There were three causes which proved the ruin of Irish 
independence. First, the volunteers were quietly and 
cleverly suppressed. 7 There was no noise, no commotion ; 





1 How terribly afraid Government was of the volunteers is evident 
from the following documents. On the 31st October 1783, General 
Burgoyne wrote to Mr Fox : — 

" Add to this the apprehensions that timid and melancholy specu- 
lators entertain upon the meeting of the Convention of Delegates the 
10th of next month. I have not myself any idea of serious commotion, 
but we have strengthened the garrison of Dublin, and it might be 
thought wrong in the commander-in-chief to be absent. You have, 




DREAD OF THE VOLUNTEERS. 



it was a simple extinction. Men might talk as they 
pleased, but without an armed force to give at least a 
physical impression to their words, the talk was a breath, 
and nothing more. Secondly, individual members of Par- 
liament were bribed, sometimes with place, sometimes with 

doubtless, the fullest information of the proceedings and language of the 
Bishop of Deny, and of the mode in which the friends of Government 
mean to meet the question of Parliamentary Reform, if urged other 
wise than by application to Parliament." — Fox's Correspondence, vol. ii. 
p. 189. 

Lord Worthington wrote from Dublin Castle on November 30, sug- 
gesting that they should be got rid of politely : — 

"If this business goes off, as I sanguinely hope it may, and the ad- 
dress should go to the king, an answer of temper and firmness at the 
same time would highly suit the present state of things ; such as a 
retrospective compliment to the conduct of the volunteers, and disap- 
probation of their present meeting,— a hope, expectation, or advice of 
their disbanding themselves." 

On the 17th November, General Burgoyne wrote again : — 

"A greater embarrassment yet has arisen in the Convention, which 
you will see in print — viz., the interference (but upon different prin- 
ciples) of the Catholics. By the mouth of Lord Kenmare, they relin- 
quish their pretensions to suffrages at elections ; by the mouth of Sir 
Patrick Bellew, they assert them. I wish they did so more soundly, 
for I am clearly of opinion that every alarm of the increase of ( latholic 
interest and prevalence beyond the present limits — which give them in 
the general opinion all the share of rights necessary for their happiness, 
and consistent with the safety of their Protestant fellow-subjects — every 
idea, I think, of an extension of their claims, excites new jealousy and 
dread of the volunteers, and cements and animates the real friends of the 
constitution, and surely with reason; for, upon the very principle "( 
free and conscientious suffrage, nothing can be more impossible than a 
Protestant representative chosen by Catholic electors." 

The last clause is amusing. " Free and conscientious suffrage " would 
have allowed Catholic electors to elect Catholic representatives. 



"J 



pension, sometimes with rank. It was quite the same in 
which form the bribe was given or taken, the work was 
done. 

And, thirdly, the press was bribed ; and, moreover, this 
was done more or less openly. On the 23d of January 1789, 
Mr Griffith complained in his place in Parliament that the 
" newspapers seemed under some very improper influence. 
In one paper the country was described as one scene of 
riot and confusion ; in another all is peace. ,By the 
proclamations that are published in them, and which are 
kept in for years, in order to make the fortunes of 
some individuals, the kingdom is scandalised and dis- 
graced through all the nations of the world where our 
newspapers are read. The proclamations are a libel on 
the country. Was any offender ever taken up in con- 
sequence of such publications? And are they not rather 
a hint to offenders to change their situation and appear- 
ance ? He did hope, from what a right honourable 
gentleman had said last year, that this abuse would have 
been redressed, but ministers have not deigned to give 
any answer on the subject." 

Proclamations were actually kept up when the country 
was at peace, so that strangers would suppose that Ireland 
was a " savage nation ; " — not the last time by any means 
that it was similarly misrepresented. Newspapers were- 
also distributed gratuitously through the country. 

On the 27th August 1781, Mr Eden wrote to Lord North, 



complaining of the "sickening circumstances" of an Irish 
secretaryship, and concluded his letter thus: — 

" My Lord-Lieuteuant has repeatedly written to your lord- 
ship, both through me and through Lord Hillsborough, on the 
essential importance of obtaining from you some small help of 
secret service money. We have hitherto, by the force of good 
words, and v.ih some degree of private expense, preserved an 
ascendency over the press, not hitherto known here, and it is of 
an importance equal to ten thousand times its cost; but we are 
without the means of continuing it, nor have we any fund to 
resist the factious attempts among the populace, which may occa- 
sionally be serious. 

" Believe me, my dear Lord, ever respectfully and affectionately 
yours, "Wm. Eden." 

On the JOih September, he wrote again on the same 
subject : — 

" Our session is drawing desperately near, and all preparations 
for ifc are much interrupted by this alarm of an invasion. We 
much regret that your lordship has not found any means to assist 
us in the article of secret service. The press is the principal 
operative power in the government of this kingdom ; and we are 
utterly without means to influence that power. We are equally 
without means to counteract the wicked attempts occasionally 
made in the idle and populous part of this town to raise mobs, 
and to turn the rabble against ministers ; having, however, re- 
peatedly represented these points, ' which nobody can deny,' we 
have done all that we can do, and must continue to steer through 
the various difficulties of this government as well as we can, 
without troops and without money, in the face of an armed 
people and general poverty." 

In 1789, Irish politics were complicated by the regency 



ADDRE.iS TO PRINCE OF WALES. 



question. Mr Pitt opposed, and Mr Fox 8 supported the 
unrestricted regency of the Prince of Wales. The Irish 
Parliament issued an address " requesting that his Royal 
Highness would take upon himself the government of 
Ireland during the continuation of the king's indispo- 
sition." Grattan headed the independent party. Some 
curious particulars of the fashion in which Ireland was 
governed came out. The Lord-Lieutenant, Lord Rock- 
ingham, positively refused to forward the address, and 



8 Mr Fox was then at Bath to recruit his health. He had suffered 
severely from his hurried journey home from Boulogne on hearing of the 
king's illness. He wrote on Irish affairs to Mr Fitzpatriek on the 17th 
February 1789, from Bath :— 

" Dear Dick, — You have heard before this of our triumphant majority 
in the House of Lords in Ireland, but I think one of the best parts of 
the news is the address having been put off till yesterday, which seeni3 
to remove all apprehension of the difficulty which you mention in your 
letter, and which in effect appears to me to be a very serious one. The 
delegation cannot leave Dublin till to-morrow ; and as probably it will 
not be composed of persons who travel bke couriers, the Prince will not 
be aide to make an answer till he is actually Regent here. I think this 
object so material that our friends ought more than ever to avoid any- 
thing that tends to delay here. 

" If the bill is passed there can be no difficulty in the Prince's 
answer, which must be acceptance, with expression of sensibility to the 
confidence in him. If, in spite of my calculatioas, he should be obliged 
to make his answer before the bill has passed — which, by the way, I 
hardly think possible — it must be couched in some general terms to 
which the acts he will do in a few days after must give the construction 
of acceptance. The fact is, our friends have gone too fast in Dublin ; 
but how could they conceive our extreme slowness here ?" — Correspond- 
ence of Cliarles James Fox, vol. ii. p. 301. Ireland, loyal or disloyal, was 
sure to be in the wrong. 



PATRIOTISM VERSUS PAT. 



Parliament was obliged to send delegates. Previous to 
their departure, the following resolution was carried by 
115 to 83: "That his Excellency's answer to both 
Houses of Parliament, requesting him to transmit their 
address to his Royal Highness, is ill-advised, contains 
an unwarrantable and unconstitutional censure on the 
proceedings of both Houses, and attempts to question the 
undoubted rights and privileges of the Lords spiritual and 
temporal, and of the Commons of Ireland." 

A desperate struggle now commenced between the 
viceroy and the Parliament. It resolved itself into pa- 
triotism versus pay. Men who had no personal interest 
in the country could not be expected to be very patriotic, 
and pay carried the day. 

Peerages were sold openly and shamelessly, and the 
money thus obtained was spent in bribing those to whom 
money was more necessary, or more gratifying than rank. 
Mr Fitzgibbon gave it to be understood that half a million 
of money was placed in his hands for this purpose, and he 
casually confessed that one address of thanks to Lord Town- 
send had cost the nation £500,000 a few years before. 

Grattan, Curran, and Ponsonby offered to prove this 
bribery at the time, but they were not allowed. Grattan's 
voice, however, could not be easily silenced ; and he ob- 
served at a later period : — 

« The threat was put into its fullest execution ; the canvass of 
the minister was everywhere-in the House of Commons, in the 



lobby, in the street, at the door of the parliamentary undertakers, 
rapped at and worn by the little caitiffs of Government, who 
offered amnesty to some, honours to others, and corruption to all ; 
and where the word of the viceroy was doubted, they offered their 
own. Accordingly, we find a number of parliamentary provisions 
were created, and divers peerages sold, with such effect, that the 
.same Parliament which had voted the chief governor a criminal, 
did immediately after give that very governor implicit support." 9 
" They began," said Curran, "with the sale of the honour of the 
peerage — the open and avowed sale for money of the peerage to 
any man who was rich and shameless enough to be the pur- 
chaser." 1 

In 1790, one huudred and ten placemen sat in the 
House of Commons; and on the 11th of July, Mr Forbes 
declared that the pensions bad been recently increased 
upwards of £100,000. 

It was little wonder that when O'Connell arrived in 
Dublin in 1797 lie found the country on the eve of a rebel- 
lion, and the so-called Irish Parliament about to extinguish 
itself under a weight of infamy, none the less contemptible, 
because it was heavily gilded over by pecuniary greed. 



Note. 

"April 18, 1782. 
" Sir, — I shall make no apology for writing ; in the present posture 
of things I should rather deem it necessary to make an apology for nut 
writing. Ireland has sent an Address, stating the causes ,1 her discon- 
tents and jealousies ; thus the question between the two nations be- 
comes capable of a specific final settlement. We are acquitted of being 



9 Life and Times of Grattan, vol. iii. p. 33B. 
1 Life of Curran, vol. i. p. 240. 



indefinite in discontents and jealousies ; we have stated the grounds of 
them, and they are those particulars in which the practical constitution 
Hi' Ireland ia diametrically opposite to the principles of Eritish liberty. 
A foreign legislation, a foreign judicature, a legislative Privy Council, 
and a perpetual army. It is impossible for any Irishman to be recon- 
ciled to any part of such a constitution, and not to hold in the most 
profound contempt the constitution of England. Thus you cannot re- 
concile us to your claim of power, without making us dangerous to your 
liberty ; and you also will, I am confident, allow that in stating sucli 
enormities as just causes of discontent and jealousy, we have asked 
nothing which is not essential to our liberty. Thus we have gained 
another step in the way to a settlement. We have defined our desires 
and limited them, and committed ourselves only to what is indispensable 
to our freedom ; and have this further argument, that you have thought 
it indispensable to yours. One question then only remains — whether 
what is necessary for us to have, is safe and honourable to Great 
Britain ? 

"The perpetual Mutiny Law, and the legislative power exercised by 
the councils of both kingdoms, it is scarcely necessary to dwell upon, 
inasmuch as I make no doubt you hold them to be mischievous or use- 
less to England. The legislative power of the Council cnu't be material 
to the connection, though the necessity of passing bills under the seal of 
Great Britain may be so. The power of suppressing in the Irish, and 
of altering in the English Council, never has been useful to England ; 
on the contrary, frequently the cause of embarrassment to British 
government. I have known Privy Councillors agree to bills in Parlia- 
ment, and in Council alter them materially by some strong clause in- 
serted to show their zeal to the King, at the expense of the popularity of 
Government. In England, an Attorney-General, or his clerk, from 
ignorance, or corruption, or contempt, may, and oftefi has, inserted 
clauses in Irish bills which have involved Irish Governments in lasting 
consequences with the people ; for you must see that a servant of 
Government in Great Britain, uninformed of the passions of Ireland, 
may, in the fykll exercise of legislative power, do irreparable mischief to 
his king and country, without being responsible to either. 

" I could mention several instances, but a Mutiny Bill rendered per- 
petual is a sufficient one, to show how impolitic that law, which com- 
mits the machine of the constitution and the passions of the human 
mind to the hand of one man. The negativing our bills is a right 



ncvei di puted ; the poisoning them i a practice we do most ardently 
deprecate, from sound rea on and sad experience. I broughl to Parlia- 
iii' ni a list of the altera! ion made, For the la I ten \ ears, in trish bills 

by the Privy C ;il or Attorney-General, and there wa qo! a in le 

alteration made upon :i sound legi lative motive , ometimi an alti i 

lion to in the Presbyterians, made by the bishops; an 

alteration made by an over zealous courtier, to make Government 

ol ■ iou and to render him ell al the same I ime peouliarrj acceptable 

to the king; lometimes an alteration from ignorance, and not seld 

I'n ii \. 

" 1 shall, therefore, uppo •■ the power of the < lounci] i bjecl to a 

principled Administration, and no vital quest ion between the two king- 
doms. Wa shall have then cleared thewaj to the greal q I 

ii i. ma j . for I conceive the legi lative and judicative supremacy to 
be one question, [f you retain the legislative power, you must re erve 

the final determinati t law, because you al will determine the 

law, in support of your claim; nrherea . if you cede the claim, the 
question of judicature is one of private property, not national ascend 
ency, and become a useli i to j ou a it is opprobrious to u i. Bi idi , 

thoi n inn tancea which render the appellant judicature i" you 

ii i precarious thing imaginable. The Lords of [reland have on 

their journal a n olution, that thej are ready to receive appeals; o 
that, aftoi the Bnal settlement with En| land, U the judicature wa i not 

included, any attorney might renew ii ntest The decrees of the 

Lords oj England, and oi the King's Bench likewise, affecting Ireland, 
are exeou ted by th« offlowt oft he Cowti o/Jti id Thi judges 

.'i Ireland are now independent Two of the barons, or judges, may 

puta total stop to the judicatu E thi I Is ol England, bj refusing 

to Lend the process of their Courts ; bo that, rder to determine your 

final judicature, it would be icessarj to go further than the authoritj 

of afi » judge . independent of England by their tenure, dependent on 

[reland bj then re idence, and perhaps influe I bj c ice and by 

oath, Besides, the 6th of George 1 i enactin as to the appeal in 
well as the judicative power, tf the former part tands, wp are dive ted 

of our buj le judicature bj an actual exerc I your upreme li [is 

lative power, and then a partial repeal would be defective upon prin 
1 1 |,ii I ''-I lative, as well as juri dictivc Sfou can't cede your lei i lative 
claim, and enjoj your jurisdictive under its authoritj and exerci md 
the whole law must (if the ol of legi lature Is ceded) fall totally. 



IVr-J- - " i-r-^^v. - ■*•- 



an att as ox nasi! affairs. 



The question then between the two nations is thus reduced to one point 

— Will England cede the claim of supremacy ( FoU Seem willing to 

cede it STour arguments have led to it Winn I say yow arguments, 
1 mean the liberal and enlightened pari of England. Both nations, by 
what they have said— one by whal il has admitted, and the other by 
wliai ii lias asserted have made the claim of England impracticable. 
The reserve oi thai claim, oi course, becomes unprofitable odium, *nd 
the relinquishment in an acquisition of affection without a loss of power. 
Thus the question between the two nations is broughl to a mere punc- 
tilio — Can England cede with dignitj I I submit ihe can , for if she 
lias consented to enable his Majesty to repeal all the laws re pecting 

Anici-icM.il g which the Declarator} A.c1 is one, she can with more 

majesty repeal the Declaratory aVcl again I Ireland, who has declared 

her resolution to stand and fall with the British nation, and lia bati d 

ber own rights by appealing aot to your fears, but your magnanimity. 

Vim will please to observe in our Address o veneration For the pride, as 
w.ll a . a lnvi- for i In- hiici i \ of I 1 ! i i;d and. N on will see in our manner 
of transmitting the Address, we have not gone to ( ' :| tie with volunteers 
as in 177!!. It was expedient to resort to such a measure with your prt 
decessors in office. In short, sir, you will see in our requisition nothing 
but what is essential to the liberty and composure of our country, and 
consistent with the dignity and interest of the other. These things 
granted, your Administration in Ireland will certainly meel with great 
support : I mean national as well as parliamentary. Iii consequence of 
these things, some laws will be aece arj an act to quiet property field 

under former judgments or decrees in Knglaml ; a Mutiny Hill ; a Hill 

to modify Poyning's Haw. Po Lbly it mighi be judicious that some of 

these should lie moved liy the Secretary here it, would contribute to his 

popularity. If will be perhaps prudent to adjourn to some further day, 

until the present Administration have formed. 

" Before I c ilude I will take the liberty to guard you again I a 

vulgar artifice, which the old Oowtt (by that I mean the Oarliel faction) 

will incline to adopt. They will perhaps write In England fa] S BUg 

gi 1 1 . . 1 1 , that Iceland will he ;aic hed with less, and that the Irish 

Administration are sacrificing to Irish popularity British rights; and 
then they will instigate Ireland to stand upon her iilliinntinii , and thus 

embarrass Government and betraj the people. | know this practise 

was adopted in Lord Buckingham's Administration hy men mortified 
by his frugality. 



*■* '- *„'•* ^ 



" Might I suggest, if you mean (as I am well inclined to believe, and 
shall be convinced by the success of our application) a Government by 
privilege, that it would be very beneficial to the character of your 
"overnment in Ireland, to dismiss from their official connexions with 
Government some notorious consciences, to give a visible, as well as real, 
integrity to his Majesty's Councils in Ireland, and to relieve them 
from a certain treachery in men, who will obey you and betray you. 

" It would be prudent to exhibit to the public eye a visible constitu- 
tional Administration. The people here have a personal antipathy to 
some men here who were the agents of former corruption, and would 
feel a vindictive delight in the justice of discarding them. When I say 
this, I speak of a measure not necessary absolutely, if the requisitions 
are complied with, but very proper and very necessary to elevate the 
character of your government, and to protect from treachery your con- 
sultations ; and when I say this, it is without any view to myself, who 
under the constitutional terms set forth, am willing to take any part in 
the Administration, provided it is not emolumentary. Your minister 
here will find very great opportunities for vigorous retrenchment, such 
as will not hazard him in the House of Commons, and may create an 
enthusiasm in his favour without doors. 

" I am running into immoderate length, and beg to conclude with 
assurances of great constitutional hopes, and personal admiration, and 
am, with great respect, 

" Your most humble and obedient servant, 

" H. Grattan. 





\$jr- T the period when O'Connell 
arrived in Dublin in the year 
1797, he had heard enough of the 
state of public affairs to be fully 
aware that a dark, deep, and deadly 
struggle was at hand. It had, in 
fact, already commenced. 

In 1790, the Northern Whig Club was 
established in Belfast, at the suggestion of Lord 
Charlemont. Reform and parliamentary inde- 
pendence were its avowed and probably its real 
objects. But neither Irish nor English Protest- 
ants were as yet free from the illogical bigotry 
of prejudice, and they declared that "no person 
ought to suffer civil hardships for his religious 
persuasion, unless the tenets of his religion lead 
him to endeavour at the subversion of the State." 



There was a gleam of intelligence in the implied possi- 
bility that it might not be right, under some certain cir- 
cumstances, to persecute a man for following the dictates 
of his conscience ; there was an alloy of prejudice in the 
suggestion that Catholics, who were alluded to, would, 
or did attempt to subvert the State. Possibly, however, 
and we think probably, it was a sop to the Cerberus 
of Protestant ascendency, a declaration that, though they 
were liberal, they would, under certain circumstances, be 
willing to act illiberally. It was something certainly 
to the credit of humanity that a time had arrived when 
Catholics were not avowedly persecuted without the ready 
excuse of disloyalty. 

A banquet followed, and the toast of " the glorious and 
immortal memory " was duly honoured, though probably 
nine-tenths of those who quaffed the libation to the shades 
of the departed hero, would have been sorely puzzled to tell 
why he was styled " glorious," and, having serious doubts 
as to the immortality of the human race, would hardly 
have believed in his. 

Lord Clare termed it an " eating and drinking club," 
and no doubt it was. There was certainly a good deal of 
drinking. On the 14th July 1791, the anniversary of the 
French Revolution was celebrated by the Protestant 
patriots, and they drank to the memory of " Thomas 
Paine," and " the rights of man," to " the glorious 
memory," and to " the majesty of the people." Notwith- 



standing nil this drinking, or perhaps because of it, the 
club died out. 

But the principles which animated the club did not die 
out. It died of respectability. When some of the men 
who had helped to inaugurate it found that the club meant 
something more than talking and drinking, they gradually 
withdrew. Lord Charlemont had been a member, and 
Lord de Clifford, and the Earl of Moira, and the Hon. 
Robert Stewart, afterwards Lord Castlereagh. But the 
men who really instituted it were there still. Henry Joy, 
M'Cracken, Russell, and, above all, Samuel Neilson, set 
themselves to form another club, a political club. Mr 
Neilson went further than his friends; he suggested that 
Catholics should be permitted to join it. 

Perhaps he saw that such a movement as he contem- 
plated could not be effected without the co-operation of 
his Catholic fellow-subjects. 2 It was very well to talk of 



2 The following extracts from the " Lives and Times of the United 
Irishmen," second series, vol. i. p. 79, will show how the blameless and 
exemplary life of a poor Catholic servant was the means of removing pre- 
judice. After all, personal knowledge of Catholics in private life seldom 
failed to do so. » 

" Neilson on this occasion said, ' Our efforts for reform hitherto have 
heen ineffectual, and they deserved to be so, for they have beeri"Selfish 
and unjust, as not including the rights of the Catholics in the claims « e 
put forward for ourselves.' The evening of that day, when the subjei t 
was first mooted, M'Cracken, on his return home, mentioned thecircum- 
utairce to a member of his family, who, in reference to the proposed club, 
expressed some doubts of Roman Catholics being sufficiently enlightened 
to co-jpcrate with them, or to be trusted by their party M'Cracken, 

L 









1 




public action, but public action required men to act, and 
rlie handful of Protestants, however important they might 
be in the eyes of Government, bad not material strength 
l'i r any movement requiring physical force. Whether the 
United Irishmen looked to physical force at the commence- 
ment of their career or not, we cannot say, but there are 
many reasons for supposing that they did. In the first 
place, they were ardent admirers of the French Revolution; 
in the second place, they had a good many years' experi- 
ence of the useles'sness of addresses and petitions. 

The famous Dungannon convention was held on the 
26th of December 1792; Neilson acted as secretary. A 
Protestant clergyman, the Rev. Mr Kelburne, used some 
strong language about " our boasted constitution," and 
some language which must have then sounded rather 

with threat earnestness, endeavoured to show the groundlessness of the 
prejudices that were entertained against the Catholics. His opinions 
were shared by one of his sisters (to whom I am indebted forthese par- 
ticulate), a person even then in advance of public opinion on the subject 
in question, and whose noble sentiments on must matters were above 
the level of those of ordinary minds Her brother. she informs me, 
asked the relative who had expressed the apprehensions referred to, if 
there was not a pool old blind woman under their roof, who had spent 
the best part of her life in their family, and although she was a Ron, an 
( 'atholic, was there anything in this world they would not trust to her 
fidelity? and if they put their whole confidence in her because they 
happened to be acquainted with her, why should they think so ill of 

ill of the same creed whom they did tea know I These details, trivial 

as they may seem, are calculated to throw some light on the original 
views and principles of those persons who were the founders of the 
Northern Society of United Irislunen." 



A , 

mm 



treasonable about '■ hereditary legislation " not beiu" 
desirable, because lords did not always inherit wisdom 
with their rank. 

On the 15th of July 1793, however, the delegates had a 
meeting, and expressed themselves a little more cautiously. 
They passed resolutions disapproving of a republican form 
of government for their own country, and expressed their 
belief that Catholic Emancipation was necessary for the 
safety of the country.' 

The Catholics came forward now, but not without con- 
siderable trepidation. Accustomed to centuries of perse- 
cution, they had hitherto only bowed to the tempest as it 
passed over them, except in some rare instances when war 






3 At a public meeting held in Belfast, on the 19th of January 17!):?, 
an address to his Majesty was determined on, signed, by order of the 
meeting, and in their name, by Charles Ranken, chairman, and Samuel 
Neilson, secretary ; expressive of their gratitude for liis Majesty's "re- 
commendation of the situation of their Catholic brethren and fellow- 
subjects to the attention of the Irish Parliament;" and conveying the 
■warmest sentiments of loyalty and attachment to his Majesty's person. 

At another meeting held in Belfast, on the 28th of January 1792, the 
particulars of which will be found in the appendix, Neilson took an 
active part. In reply to an opinion expressed by Mr Henry Joy, " That 
neither the Protestant mind was sufficiently prepared to grant. Dor the 
Catholic one universally prepared to receive, a plenary and immediate 
exercise of every right which members of a State can possibly possess ; " 
— Neilson expressed his "astonishment at hearing that or any part of 
the address called a Catholic question ! " To his understanding. " it no 
more presented a Roman Catholic question than a Church question, a 
Presbyterian, a Quaker, an Anabaptist, or a mountain question. TU 
true question was, whether Irishmen, should be free." 



R 1 TS I y E St G I. A A ' l>. 



seemed the only hope of obtaining liberty to worship God 
as their conscience bade them. The plan was prepared by 
Theobald Wolfe Tone, a Protestant. The Catholics were 
to meet openly, and proceed openly. Five gentlemen were 
chosen to bear their address to the king. These gentlemen 
were Sir Thomas French, Mr Byrne, Mr Keogh, Mr Deve- 
reaux, and Mr Bellew. They went through Belfast on 
their way to London. It was not their direct road cer- 
tain'y, but the Protestant leaders of the United Irishmen 
received them in triumph, and the northern Presbyterians 
showed their advancement in political enlightenment by 
removing the horses from their carriage, and dragging 
them in triumph through the town. 

The delegates had chosen an opportune moment for their 
visit to royalty. There were fears both within and without; 
war imminent in Europe; and in England there were ter- 
rible apprehensions of domestic riot. Several associations 
had been funned in England demanding Parliamentary 
reform, or seeking to obtain it ; hence it was necessary 
that war in Ireland should be averted, even at the cost of 
a few concessions. 




i On the 13th December 1 7f>2. at the opening of the session, the king 
addressed Parliament thus, on the state of England: — "The seditious 
practices which had been in a great measure checked by your firm and 
explicit declaration in the last session, and by the general concurrence 
of my people in the s'.'.me sentiments, have of late been more openly 
renewed, ami with increased activity. A spirit of tumult and disorder 
ft! i li LUixul consequence of such practices) has shown itself in acts of 




Several acts were passed to avert the danger, but Irish- 
men had begun tii know their power, the power of united 
Irishmen : and when the Portland ministry was formed in 
17D-1, it was found that something more substantial was 
necessary. Lord Fitzwilliam was appointed Lord-Lieu- 
tenant, and for the first time Grattan was taken into the 
councils of the so-called Irish Government. On the 1:2th 



riot and iii-iii ii.-t (in. which required the interposition of a military force 
in support of tin- civil magistrate. The industry employed to excite dis- 
content on various pretexts, ami in different parts of the kingdom, lias 
appeared to proceed from a design to attempt the destruction of mir 
happy constitution, and the subversion of all order and government ; 
and this design has evidently been pursued in connection and conceit 
with persons in foreign countries." 

Lord John Russell observes, in his " Correspondence of Fox," vol. iii. 
p. 33: "England, Prussia, and Austria, with lofty pretensions of light- 
ing for the cause of religion and order, had each separate and selfish 
objects, while the French, united and enthusiastic, fought for a mock 
liberty, but a real independence. With the Allies it was a war some- 
times of principles ; sometimes of provinces ; sometimes to restore a 
monarchy, sometimes to acquire Martinique. With the French the 
most horrible tyranny, the most systematic murder and plunder at 
home, were accompanied by the most brilliant courage, the most 
scientific plans of campaign, and the most entile devotion to the glory 
of their country." 

Mr Fox wrote thus to Lord Holland, June 14, 1793 : "I believe the 
love of political liberty is wot an error; but, if it is one, I am sure I 
never shall be converted from it — and I hope you never will. If it lie 
an illusion, it is one that has brought forth more of the best qualities 
and exertions of the human mind than all other causes put together ; and 
it serves to give an interest in the affairs of the world which, without it, 
would be insipid ; but it is unnecessary to preach to you upon this .sub- 
ject, It was only when political liberty was asked. for in Ireland that 
it ceased to meet with the admiration of English statesmen." 



of July, he obtaiued leave to bring in a bill for the relief of 
Catholics, three members only dissenting. 

But once more the nation was duped; Lord Fitzwilliam 
was recalled on the 24th of March. Whether the English 
Government really intended to do anything for Ireland or 
not, can never now be known. If they intended justice, it 
was a pity the intention should not have been carried out; 
if they played a deceitful game, they might have learned by 
the result that honesty, even in political matters, is the best, 
because it is the wisest policy. Lord Fitzwilliam indeed 
declared that he would never have undertaken the govern- 
ment, if Catholic Emancipation had not been included in 
the ministerial programme. Possibly Mr Pitt expected to 
find him a more pliant tool, and recalled him when he 
fiiuud the metal not malleable. 8 



5 " There were some members of the Irish Parliament certainly not 
disposed to favour the Catholic claims, who saw the folly of this kind of 
government. Sir- Lawrence Parsons said : ' That the grant of supplies 
and the redress of grievances should go hand in hand. The only security 
the country had was a short Money Bill ; it had been tried in 1779 ; it 
had been tried in 1789 ; and, in both instances, had been of utility. The 
people had been led to expect great measures ; their hopes had been 
raised, and now were about to lie blasted. If the Cabinet of Great Britain 
had held out an assent to the Catholic question, and had afterwards 
ivtrarted.it was an insult to the nation which the House should resent. 
There had been no meetings ; no petitions of the Protestants against the 
claims of the Catholics. It would thence be inferred that their senti- 
ments were not adverse to the emancipation ; this was held out as the 
leading measure of administration ; the Responsibility Bill was an- 
other ; the Reform Bill was another. In consideration of these measures 
additional taxes had been voted to the amount of i'iJoO.UOQ ; but now it 



But tlie English Government were perfectly well aware 
of the certain result, of this treachery. It has been said 
again and again, that Mr Pitt wished to drive the Irish 
into rebellion in order to effect the Union. Whether 
he deliberately took measures to that effect or not, cannot 
now be discovered, but his public acts sufficiently show 
that if he had not that intention, he was at least fully 
aware that what he did, and what he omitted to do, would 
alike lead to that result. His conduct was mean and 
dastardly ; no noble-minded man would have deceived a 
helpless and confident people as he deceived the Irish 
nation. 

" It was not until the Irish Parliament had submitted to 
heavy burdens, not only by providing for the security of 
the kingdom by great military establishments, but like- 
wise by assisting the empire at large in the moment of its 
greatest distress, by aids great and unparalleled beyond all 
example; it was not till Lord Fitzwilliam's popularity had 
induced the House of Commons, on the faith of popular 

appeared that the country had been duped — that nothing was to be done 
for the people. If the British minister persisted in such infatuation, 
discontent would be at its height, the army must be increased, and 
every man must have dragoons in his house.' The motion was rejected 
by 146 to 24. Mr Conolly then proposed three resolutions: — 'That 
Lord Fitzwilliam by his public conduct since his arrival in Ireland de- 
served the thanks of the House, and the confidence of the people.' Never 
in the history of any nation can there be found such duplicity, such 
treachery, and such meanness as was practised towards the people of 
Ireland." — Life of Grattan, vol. iv. p. Ib8. 






questions, to grant the largest supply ever demanded, and 
a larger army than had ever before been voted in Ireland ; 
it was not till he had laid a foundation for increasing the 
established force of the country, and procured a vote of 
£"200,000 for the general defence of the empire, and 
",0,000 men for the navy, and a supply to the amount of 
£1,800,000, that the British Cabinet proceeded to notice 
and reply to Lord Fitzwilliam's letters. Then, for the first 
time, the dismissal of Mr Cooke and Mr Beresford was 
complained of, and made a charge against Lord Fitzwilliam ; 
then, and not till then, commenced the accusations against 
him as to the Catholic question, and his imputed design to 
overturn the constitution in Church and State. But a re- 
ference to the proceedings on this subject will show the 
futility of this charge, and that it was a mere pretext. 
Let it be recollected that this question, though opposed in 
1T93 by Lord Westmoreland and his friends, had been sup- 
ported by Mr Hobart (the Irish Secretary), and the British 
Cabinet; that Mr Pitt and Mr Dundas (Lord Melville), 
had given it their support; that they had communicated, 
their intentions to the Catholic agents in London, and 
their expressions (well remembered and often quoted) 
were, that "they would not risk a rebellion in Ireland on 
such a question:" yet the very man who had actually agreed 
to it, in conference with Mr Grattan and Lord Fitzwilliam, 
and to the former of whom he had used these very remark- 
able words, " I have taken office, and 1 have done so be- 



LORD FITZWILLIAM. 



a 



cause I knew there was to be an entire change of system," 
—this Duke of Portland, in his letter to Lord Fitzwilliam, 
says that " to defer the Catholic question was not only a 
thing to be desired for the present, but the means of doing 
a greater service to the British empire than it has been 
capable of receiving since the Revolution, or at least -since 
the Union." 

On the receipt of this letter, Lord Fitzwilliam immedi- 
ately acted with a spirit and resolution worthy of him. He 
wrote to Mr Pitt, defended the dismissal of Mr Beresford, 
as necessary to the efficacy of his government, and left the 
minister to choose between him and Mr Beresford. He 
wrote the same night to the Duke of Portland, stating his 
surprise at their resisting a question that had been long 
since agreed upon, and this at the expiration of such an 
interval of time — namely, from the 8th of January, when 
he first wrote about the Catholic question, to the 8th of 
February, when- it was first objected to by the English 
ministers. 

He stated the danger of hesitation or resistance, and lie 
refused to be the person to raise a flame in the country, 
that nothing short of arms could keep down ; and left him 
to determine whether, if he was not to be supported, he 
ought not to be removed. 6 



V 



6 Life of Grattan, vol. iv. p. 193.— The Beresfords knew their power 
well. They knew also, though they raised a " No Popery " cry, that 
the leaders and first movers of the United Irishmen, whom they styled 



On the 25th of February 1795, Mr Forbes wrote to Mr 
Sergeant Adair. He concluded. his letter thus: "It is 
reported that Pitt intends to overturn the Irish Cabinet by 
rejecting Catholic claims. Should he pursue that line, 
England will be involved in inextricable confusion, and it 
will end in the total alienation of Ireland." 

Burke wrote to Mr Grattan, expressing his indignation 
at the way in which he had been treated. In the English 
Parliament, there was a scene of mutual recrimination con- 
cerning the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, but no one con- 
cerned himself much about the effect that this would have 
in Ireland. 

The truth was that the Beresfords had determined from 
the first to get rid of the Lord-Lieutenant, and they sue- 



'•""■rS 



m 



" devils," were Protestants. It mattered little to them how Ireland 
suffered so they held place and pension. On the 4th Sept. 1796, Mr 
Beresford wrote to his friend Lord Auckland : — 

"The United Irishmen of the north, alias the Dissenters and the 
Defenders, and the Papists would join them; these two classes are 
bound by oaths, &c, whilst the mob and common people, not sworn, 
would take advantage, and plunder everybody, and commit murders and 
such extravagances as are always the consequences of letting loose the 
rabble. The utmost pains have been taken by these devils, the United 
Irishmen, to prepare the minds of the different classes of the people for 
mischief. The public prints are of the most seditious and inflammatory 
species. They have a vast number of emissaries constantly going 
through the country, to seduce every person they can, and swear them ; 
lb. v have songs and prophecies, just written, stating all late events and 
what is to happen, as if made several years ago, in order to persuade the 
people that, as a great part of them has already come to pass, so the 
remainder will certainly happen." 









ceeded. 7 Lord Fitzwilliam was perfectly aware of the 
cause of his dismissal, but lie seems to have felt the decep- 
tion which had been practised on the Irish nation far more 
than the injury done to himself. 

Lord Camden succeeded, and as the Government had 
some apprehensions lest the Catholics should avenge them- 
selves in any way for the duplicity with which they had 
been treated, it was proposed to establish the College of 
Maynooth. The excuse to those who objected to granting 
even the least favour to Catholics, had the advantage of 
being a plausible one. It was evident that no amount of 
penal laws would prevent Catholics from becoming priests ; 
it was evident, it was indeed a matter of fact, that if they 
were not allowed to be educated in Ireland, they would be 
educated abroad. It was said that being educated abroad 
tended to render them disloyal ; and certainly to deny a man 
education in his own country, and oblige him to endure the 
labour and expense of expatriation in order to obtain it, was 



1 Lord Auckland worked up the Beresford interest in London quietly, 
and with the steady determination which generally insures Buccess. The 
Beresfords held their power solely on a " No Popery" cry. Any 
liberality— or, to speak more correctly, justice to Catholics— was fatal 
to their continuance in power, because they had made their political 
success depend on their religious bigotry. Mr Beresford, of 
denied his great political power, but even in the letter which he wrote 
himself to Lord Auckland, who acted as his ambassador in tin- affair, he 
wrote so strongly of his "power of embarrassing Government," that Lord 
Auckland thought it best to keep back that part of his letter even from 
his patron, Mr Pitt.— Beresford Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. .0u-y4. 



not naturally the beat method of inducing affection for the 
power which compelled this course. It was, moreover, 
believed that if Government endowed Maynooth the Irish 
hierarchy would feel bound in return to support Govern- 
ment. It was at least certain to all but the most obtuse, 
that a rebellion was imminent in Ireland, and this seemed 
a probable means of enlisting the Catholic clergy on the 
side of England. 

The times were becoming daily more and more troubled, 
principally because the condition of the people was becoming 
daily worse. AVhen men are starving, when they know 
that their starvation is caused by injustice, they are seldom 
slow to redress their wrongs. How patiently the Irish can 
sutler when famine comes to them as a direct visitation 
from God, has been proved in later years. It is probable 
the poor Irish Catholics of the south would have suffered as 
patiently if they had not been roused to resistance by the 
stern Presbyterians of the north, and if the newly-formed 
Orange Society had not been allowed to attack them with 
impunity. 

The state of Ireland at this period was certainly fearial, 
and an eternal disgrace to those by whom it was governed. 
A Protestant writer says : — 

" The Government thought, at least, to retain the Church of 
England faction by uniting the interest of the ' Peep-of-Day Boys ' 
with that of the Church of England gentry, from which curious 
union sprung, in 1796, the Orange Society, sworn to maintain the 
Protestant ascendency of 1688. But the Orangemen were as 




lawless as the Defenders. Lord Gosford, who had been appointed 
joint lord-lieutenant of the county of Armagh with the Earl of 
Charlemont, in 1791, to counterpoise the Whiggism of the latter, 
found it necessary in December 179.5, to convene a meeting of 
the magistrates of that county, and call on them to put a stop 
to the barbarous practices of the Orange Society. It sufficed for 
a man to profess the Roman Catholic religion to have his dwelling 
burnt over his head, and himself, with his family, banished out of 
the county. Nearly half the inhabitants of the county of Armagh 
had been thus expatriated. To check these outbreaks of Defenders 
and Orangemen, Parliament, early in 179C, passed an Insurrection 
Act. Persons administering unlawful oaths were to suffer death, 
and those who took them transportation. But in the terrible 
times which ensued, this evil was allowed to work only one way. 
The Orangemen, and other Protestant insurrectionists, were 
allowed to bear arms, and to use them as they pleased. The 
penalties all fell upon the unhappy Catholics, and on such Pro- 
testants as had joined the United Irishmen, a numerous and 
powerful body." 

The high sheriff of Galway, Charles Blake, addressed 
Grattan on the alarming state of affairs, in the name and 
by the desire of the gentlemen and freeholders of the 
county. They declared it "highly honourable" to him, 
though not to the age, that his dismissal from office was 
considered " a necessary and previous stage to the return 
of some that are not reported to love the people." The 
letter was short, manly, intelligent, and worthy of the men 
of Galway. 

The students of Dublin University addressed him, and, 
with a liberality quite beyond the age, declared m -t 
truly "that the harmony and strength of Ireland will be 



$ 






«-■■*■; 

m 



8 



(U. 



\ 



■■"-■£■'■ 



I 



THE CATHOLIC CLERGY. 




founded on the solid basis of Catholic Emancipation, and 
the reform of those grievances which have inflamed public 
indignation." 8 

Even at that moment, if the least effort had been made in 
the direction of justice to Catholics, and if even a trifling 
instalment of the justice which has since been done to them 
had been attempted, the rebellion of 1798 might never have 
been, and a legacy of hatred to England might have been 
averted. 

The Catholic clergy were wholly on the side of order ; 
hut what could they do with a starving people ? England 
had destroyed Irish trade; they could not excuse this; they 
could not say it is your own fault, that you are starving, 
hear it as a calamity which you have brought on yourselves. 
England still persecuted their religion, and what was 
worse, permitted, if she did not actually encourage, Irish 
Protestants to massacre their fellow-subjects because they 
were Irish Catholics. Could this be defended ? Yet they 
did what they could ; they practised patience, they practised 
submission, they preached practical Christianity; and if 
their lessons had no effect, it was not because Irish Catho- 
lics were less faithful to the teaching of their holy faith 
than they had been in former ages, but because they believed 
that their cause was a just one. 9 



8 Life of Grattan, by his Son, vol. iv. pp. 222, 223. 
8 On the 10th March 1798, Dr Lanigan, the Catholic Bishop of 
Ossory, wrote thus to Dr Troy, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin : — 



7^ 



if 




Negotiations were opened with the French Government 

by the United Irishmen in 1796. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 
Arthur O'Connor, a gentleman of property in the county 
of Cork, and Theobald Wolfe Tone, a barrister, were the 
persons selected for this undertaking. 

O'Connell's son, in writing his father's Memoir, was 
naturally anxious to screen his father from the discredit 

" Ballyragget, March 10, 1798. 

" Most Rev. Sir,— I was absent from Kilkenny these eight days, and 
was a great part of that time occupied with the priests that border on the 
Queen's County, in consulting them, and concerting measures with them 
in order to prevent, if possible, the introduction of United Irishmen and 
their principles into this county. The letter you honoured me with 
was sent after me, and I received it there. 1 could make this short but 
true answer to it, that the charges mentioned there against the priests 
and me are false, malicious, and groundless. It is necessary, perhaps 
to prove this more at large. I beg your patience, then, while I state 
tlie facts as they happened. 

" A sermon was preached in St James's chapel, about a month ago, on 
faith, its necessity, its utility, and the conditions required for true 
faith. The preacher had in view only to confute the lax principles of 
the richer Roman Catholics, who, under pretext of liberality of senti- 
ment, wished to establish an indifference about all religion and all reli- 
gious modes of worship."— Memoirs of Viscount Castlcreagh, vol. i. p. 161. 
The upper classes of Catholics were sorely tempted to apostatise. 
The cause of this temptation has been already fully explained. Tin- 
consequence was that they kept very much aloof from their former 
( lathplic brethren. Mr Grattan says, in his " Life of his Father," vol. iv. 
p. 50 : " in late as well as in early times the Irish aristocracy have 
attached themselves too much to party in England, and have forgotten 
the real interests of their own nation. The wise policy would have been 
to have attended exclusively to their own country— a course more politic 
though less profitable." The treatment which the upper classes had' 
received during the Irish revolution tended to strengthen this feelin ■ 
still greater. 




of being a United Irishman. That he was there is not 
the slightest doubt, for he has left the fact on record himself. 
His naturally enthusiastic temperament led him to throw 
himself eagerly into any scheme likely to benefit his 
country. He joined the artillery corps on his arrival in 
Dublin ; and the division to which he belonged, known as 
the " Lawyers' Artillery," was said to have been the best 
got up, and the best equipped in Dublin. 1 

He also joined a debating society which met in Eustace 
Street, where the stirring events of the times were freely 
canvassed. Here, he says : — 

"I had many good opportunities of acquiring valuable informa- 
tion, upon which I very soon formed my own judgment. It was 
a terrible time. The political leaders of the period could not con- 
ceive such a thing as a perfectly open and above-board political 
machinery. My friend, Richard Newton Bennett, was an adjunct 
to the Directory of United Irishmen. I was myself a United 
Irishman. As I saw how matters worked, I soon learned to have 
no secrets in politics." 2 

O'Connell lodged in Trinity Place. A gentleman who 



1 The uniform of the lawyers' corps was scarlet and blue, their motto, 
Pro aris el f oris ; the attorneys' regiment of Volunteers was scarlet and 
Pomona green ; a corps called the Irish Brigade, and composed princi- 
pally of Catholics (after the increasing liberality of the day had per- 
mitted them to become Volunteers) wore scarlet and white ; other regi- 
ments of Irish brigades wore scarlet faced with green, and their motto 
was Vox populi suprema lex est ; the goldsmiths' corps, commanded by 
the Duke of Leinster, wore blue, faced with scarlet and a piofessional 
profusion of gold lace. 

3 Personal Recollections, by O'Neill Daunt. 




I? 



0' CO XX ELL IX DAXGER. 



knew Dublin well at that period describes it as " an almost 
unexplored nook." He was very intimate with Mr Murray, 
a respectable grocer, who resided at No. 3 South Great 
George Street, and who, like most Irishmen of the period, 
was in heart a rebel. That O'Connell was then in favour 
of physical force there can be no doubt, however he may 
have wished in later years to throw a veil of oblivion over 
his boyish ardour. A rising was expected literally every 
night, and Major Sirr was patrolling Dublin eager to exer- 
cise his bloody mission on the suspected. 

On one memorable evening O'Connell, excited partly by 
drink and partly by patriotism, and always ready to be first 
in the fray, was eager to join a meeting of United Irishmen 
that very night, and to swear in new members, but his 
host, more prudent, though by no means less patriotic,* 
induced the enthusiastic youth to accompany him to 



3 Mr Murray's son, who must have been thoroughly well-informed on 
the subject, has left the following account of the affair on record, which 
I quote from the " Sham Squire," with the author's permission : — " We 
are indebted to the late Mr Peter Murray, of the Registry of Deeds 
Office, Dublin, a man of scrupulous veracity, for the following curious 
reminiscence of O'Connell in 1798 : — ' My father, a respectable cheese- 
monger and grocer, residing at 3 South Great George Street, was ex- 
ceedingly intimate with O'Connell, when a law student, and during his 
earlier career at the bar. Mr O'Connell, at the period of which I speak, 
lodged in Trinity Place adjacent, an almost unexplored nook, and to 
many of our citizens a terra incognita. I well remember O'Connell, 
one night at my father's house during the spring of 1798, so carried 
away by the political excitement of the day, and by the ardour of his 
innate patriotism, calling for a prayer-book to swear in some zealous 



m 




the canal bridge at Leeson Street, where he saw him safely 
on board a turf boat, and out of harm's way. It was well 
! hat this had been accomplished, for Mr Murray's house 
v. as searched that night by Major Sirr. 

In one ofO'Connell's communications to Mr O'Neill Daunt, 
lie mentions leaving Dublin in June 1798 in a boat, and 
having paid the pilot half a guinea to put him on shore at 
Cork. Indeed, it was impossible at that time to travel in 
any other way. Bands of armed men were marching in 
every direction through the country, and as neither party 
was very particular as to identity, the most peaceful tra- 
veller was not free from danger. It would appear probable 



young men as United Irishmen at a meeting of the body in a neigh 

bouring street. Counsellor was there, and offered to accompany 

O'Connell on his perilous mission. My father, although an Irishman 
of advanced liberal views and strong patriotism, was not a United Irish- 
man, and endeavoured, but without effect, to deter his young and gifted 
friend from the rash course in which he seemed embarked. Dubhn 
was in an extremely disturbed state, and the outburst of a bloody in- 
-ui ti '.'Hun seemed hourly imminent. My father resolved to exert to the 
uttermost the influence which it was well known he possessed over his 
young friend. He made him accompany him to the canal bridge at 
Leeson Street, and after an earnest conversation, succeeded in persuad- 
ing the future Liberator to step into a turf boat which was then 
inning Dublin. That night my father's house was searched by 
' ; tjor Si it, accompanied by the attorneys' corps of yeomanry, who 
pillaged it to their hearts' content. There can be no doubt that private 
information of O'ConnelTs tendencies and haunts had been communi- 
cated to tin government.'" — Tlie Sham Squire ; or, The Rebellion in Ire- 
land, page 305. Dublin : Kelly. 

Mr John O'Connell gives an account of the affair which was evi- 
dently " revised." He says : — " On one occasion, however (perhaps the 




-M 



M ti 



that O'Connell remained in the peaceful wilds of Kerry 
during the most eventful period of the Rebellion. It was 
at that time that he contracted the fever previously men- 
tioned. But even then news travelled to that remote 
locality, and the terrible Revolution of '98 was read, not as 
we Bead it now, as a tale of horrors long past, hut as a 
terrible tragedy then being enacted hour by hour, and of 
which the end was not known yet. 



only one of his life), at the table of Mr Murray, already mentioned, about 
the month of March of the year 1798, he was betrayed, by the heat of a 
political discussion, into some forgetfulness of his constant habit of tem- 
perance ; and took what to him was inconvenient, although to the well- 
soaked brains of most of his compeers it would have been of no conse- 
quence. Returning that night full of self-reproach and annoyance at 
the unaccustomed sensations he had subjected himself to, his interposi- 
tion to save a wretched female from the blows of some cowardly ruffians, 
in the garb of gentlemen, drew upon him the attack of the whole party ; 
but for a while (owing to his great strength and activity) with signal dis- 
comfiture to themselves, three being knocked down by him in succes- 
sion. However, one of the latter, on getting up, came behind ami 
pinioned him, and so he was overpowered — receiving, while in this de- 
fenceless position, and ere he could free himself, several blows on the 
face, by which it was so disfigured as to render a few days' confinement 
to the house advisable. While under this irksome restraint, his land- 
lord, a most respectable tradesman (well known long afterwards t>> the 
theatre-going folk as Regan the fruiterer), then purveyor to the Castle 
of Dublin, took the liberty of his years, and permitted but respectful 
familiarity, to warn his young lodger from committing himself politically 
—detailing the dark hints rife in the purlieus of the Castle, of the deep 
and fearful game the government were playing in allowing the insur- 
rection to mature, while they kept themselves ready, and had it in their 
power to lay hands upon its leaders at any moment." — Memoirs uf 
O'Connell, by his Son, vol. i. p. 15. 



Grattan withdrew from politics, hopeless of inducing the 
Government to do justice, or the people to bear injustice. 
The United Irishmen only numbered two men of rank 
amongst their leaders, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur 
O'Connor. Lord Edward belonged to the noble house of 
Leinster, and had learned to desire liberty, not for a class, 
but for all, first in America, 4 where he had served under 
Lord Cornwallis, and then in France, where he had attended 



4 Lord Edward Fitzgerald's letters to his mother from America show 
tin.' singular tenderness of his nature, and his delicate thoughtfulness 
for others, and especially for his good mother. He wrote, " She has a 
rope about my neck that gives hard tugs at it, and it is all I can do not 
to give way." How terrible was the last "giving way" of that fond 
heart, can only be realised by natures as sensitive as his. "Writing about 
some business, he says — " I believe there is un bien clique of fellows 
in that country. Pray do not let any of them into Kilrush, for they 
will only distress and domineer over the poor tenants." — Memoirs of 
Lord Edward Fitzgerald, vol. i. p. 124. Lord Edward was treated most 
cruelly after his capture, notwithstanding his high rank. It is said that 
Li >n 1 < 'lure urged him to escape, and said every port in the country would 
be left open to him, but his nature was far too chivalrous to seek his own 
safety while others were in danger. 

The late Lord Holland furnishes, in his " Memoirs," many interesting 
illustrations of Lord Edward's sweet and gentle disposition: — "With 
tin- most unaffected simplicity and good nature he would palliate, from 
the force of circumstances or the accident of situation, the perpetrators 
of the very enormities which had raised his high spirit and compassionate 
nature to conspire and resist. It was this kindness of heart that led 
him, on his deathbed, to acquit the officer who indicted his wounds of 
all malice, and even to commend him for an honest discharge of his 
duty. It was this sweetness of disposition that enabled him to dismiss 
witli good humour one of his bitterest persecutors, who had visited him 
in his mangled condition, if not to insult his misfortunes, with the idle 
hopi' of extorting his secret ' I would shake bands willingly with you,' 



ARREST OF FIFTEEX LEADERS. 161 

a political dinner, at which he accepted the title of " citi- 
zen." O'Connor was nephew and heir to Lord Longueville, 
by whom he was brought into Parliament in 1790. 

Fifteen leaders of the United Irishmen were seized in 
Belfast on the 14th of April 1797. They were all Protes- 
tants, and of the number there were seven Presbyterian 
ministers, and three Covenanters. Their papers were exa- 
mined, and afforded an excuse for fresh cruelties. In the 
very face of the fact, that these men, who were the real 
originators of the revolt, were Protestants, the fiercest 
punishments were inflicted on the Catholics. When Lord 
Cornwallis arrived in Ireland, he found his difficulty was 
not so much to repress the rebellion as to quiet those who 
were exciting and increasing it by their blood-thirsty rage. 
Every one who had a grudge against a neighbour denounced 
him as a rebel. Every one who wanted to gain favour 
with government sent in a list of suspected persons. This 
was often done secretly ; no name was given, and yet 
government, or those who were acting in the name of 
government, proceeded at once to hang, shoot, or torture 
the unhappy victims. 5 



said lie, ' but mine are cut to pieces. However, I '11 shake a toe, and 
wish you good-bye.'" 

His family felt his treatment bitterly. His brother, Lord Henry 
Fitzgerald, wrote to Lord Camden reproaching him with his cruelty ; 
but it was useless, cruelty was the order of the day. — See Memoirs oj 
Orattan, vol. iv p. 387. 

5 Mr Dundas forwarded one of these lists from a man " who would 



T^l 



W. 




LIST OF THOSE SUSPECTED. 



The excesses connnitk'il by the army were BO horrible that 
we cannot defile these pages with them. Ou the 31st of 

ii.il come forward,'' Id Sir lv:il J ill Abercrombie. The list is a curiosity, 
and shows how such matters were arranged. 

Return op Suspected Persons. 



Names. 
Stephen ( tarry . 

Waller Mooney . 

Michael Lee . . 

James Kelly . . 

Patrick Hume. . 

Bugh Toole . . 
Patrick < Ionian . 
John Conlan . . 
Dominicli • Ionian 
Maurice Conlan . 
Matthew Conlan. 
( Ionian, his sun 

Tl as i lannon . 

Michael Barnes . 
Edward Burne . 
Chri tophei Flood 
— Deerine. . . 



Edmund Bel] 



n 



i- Kelly 



I'.u n.k Doyle . 

Flood. . . . 

-- II;. Iv, son to El 

ward Daly . . 

Law lame Byrne . 



KrsifU'nce. 

Kildare 
Friarstown 

KiMare. . 

Do. . . . 

Ballysax . 
( lonlanstown 



Clmrneters of the Men. 

Trea rarer to the County meeting, 

Kepivsrntalive to Surgeon Cuni- 
mings. 

I ii eplj engaged, and a I laptain. 

A Committee-man, and knows 
much. 

A Captain, much with Lord Ed. 
Fitzgerald. 

Treasurer 8 ildare Meeting. 

Do A supposed assassin. 

Do. 

Brownstown. 
Do. 

Ballysax. 
Do. 

BaUyfair '. 
Do. . . . 
Landoroft. 
Cut Bu Ii. 

,, , , (His sun a Captain, and now in 

AlaililniMown ■•. ' 



Deep in the secret 
Used to be much with Lord 
Edward Fitzgerald. 



llonil llmni' 

on the < 'in- 

ragh . . . 

I'm i master of 

Kilculleii . 



( jail. 
Has a meeting every Sunday at 

his home at III o'clock. 



A Captain, and swears in many. 

■p. I A Captain, and deeply con- 

Do \ eerned. 



Do. 

Do. . . 

Ballysax 



\ I mi. mi of the half-barony of 

Kilcullen. 
A blacksmith, and supposed tc 
have made most of the pikes. 



w 



Eh 



August 1798, Lord Cornwallis issued general orders in the 
vain hope of improving their conduct; he might as well 
have tried to control the west wind. 

" Hai.unamork, Avgust 3]s<, 1798. 
"It is with very great concern that Lord Cornwallis finds him- 
self obliged to call on the General Officers and the Commanding 
Officers of regiments in particular, and in general on the officers 
of the army, to assist him in putting a stop to the licentious 
conduct of the troops, and in saving the wretched inhabitants 



It will be seen that whole families were marked out for slaughter 
—that in many cases no reason whatever is given for the accusation, 
and that in many more the unhappy men were only "supposed" to 
be guilty. Mr Dundas concludes this Letter by saying :—" Every thing 
goes on quietly, but we have been obliged to destroy a large quantity 
of whisky, without which the troops would have got drunk, an. I done 
much mischief." The yeomen and military were drunk half their time, 
and lle.se wretches were the men to whom full liberty was granted to 
kill and torture any one on mere suspicion, or even without that excu e. 

Sir Ralph Ahcrr.rombie wa too gallant an ollirer to encourage, or if 
he could help it, to practise such atrocities, but no one had control over 
the army, which he declared "was formidable to every one but the 
enemy." Lord Castlereagh wrote to General Lake, who succeeded Sir 
Ralph on the same subject. 

" Dublin Castle, April 2bth, 1798. 

"Sib— It having been represented to his Excellency the Lord-Lieu 
tenant, that much evil may arise to the discipline of the troops from 
their being permitted for any length of time to live at free quarter . 
that the loyal and well-affected have in many instances Buffered in 
common with the disaffected, from a measure which does not admit in 
its execution of sufficient discrimination of persons, 1 am directed bj 
his Excellency to request that you will advert to these inconveniences 
and adopt such other vigorous and effectual measures for enforcing the 
speedy surrender of arms as in your discretion you shall think fit, and 
which shall appear to you not liable to these objections."— Memoirs of 
Viscount Castlereagh, vol. i. p. 187. 



from being robbed, and in the most shocking manner ill-treated, 
by those to whom they had a right to look for safety and pro- 
tection. 

"Lord Cornwallis declares, that if he finds that the soldiers of 
any regiment have had opportunities of committing these excesses 
from the negligence of their officers, he will make those officers 
answerable for their conduct ; and that if any soldiers are caught 
either in the act of robbery, or with the articles of plunder in 
their possession, they shall be instantly tried, and immediate 
execution shall follow their conviction. 

"A Provost-Marshal will be appointed, who will, with his 
guard, march in the rear of the army, and who will patrol about 
the villages and houses in the neighbourhood of the camp." 

Lord Cornwallis has been accused of partiality to Ire- 
land because be would not countenance cruelty, though he 
could not prevent it. We therefore give other testimony — 
Captain Taylor wrote from Ballinamore on the 31st of 
August 1798 : — 

" We halt here this day to give the Queen's and 29th time to 
join us : they have made a most expeditious march from Wex- 
ford, and will be at Ballinasloe this day. We shall proceed 
towards Tuam to-morrow, and they will march in the same direc- 
tion. As far as we can learn as yet, the French are still at 
Castlebar, entrenching themselves, and drilling those of the in- 
habitants who have joined. Among the latter I fear there are 
some of the Longford and Kilkenny : those regiments marched to 
this place yesterday, and upon our arrival were immediately 
ordered on towards Athlone. Their conduct, and that of the 
Carabineers and Frazers, in action on the retreat from Castlebar 
and Tuam, and the depredations they committed on the road, 
exceed, I am told, all description. Indeed, they have, I believe, 
raised a spirit of discontent and disaffection which did not before 




LORD Cons WALLLS 



exist in this part of the country. Every endeavour has been used 
to prevent plunder in our corps, but it really is impossible to stop 
it in some of the regiments of militia with us, particularly the 
light battalions." 

With the intelligence of a master mind, and the clear- 
ness of an unprejudiced mind, Lord Cora wallis studied and 
fathomed the " Irish difficulty." It would have been well 
for both countries if counsels like his had prevailed. He saw 
that the system hitherto pursued was bad:" certainly it had 
been thoroughly tested, and as certainly it had entirely failed. 

6 The following letter ^deserves consideration even at the present 
day :— 

" Marquis Cormcattis to the Luke of Portland. 
[Secret and Confidential.] 

" Dublin Castle, Sept. 16, 1798. 

" My dear Lord, — If I have not appeared to give my sentiments to 
your Grace with the utmost freedom, and to speak with the most perfect 
openness of heart on the subject both of men and measures in this 
country, I most earnestly request that you will believe that such ap- 
parent reserve has not proceeded from a want of the most affectionate 
regard personally to yourself, or the most entire confidence in your up- 
rightness and honour, but in truth from my not being able to give you 
opinions which I had not formed, or to explain things which I was not 
sure that I understood. 

" The quick succession of important events during the short period of 
my Lieutenancy has frequently diverted my attention from the pursuit 
of that great question — How this country can be governed and pre- 
served, and rendered a source of strength and power, instead of remain- 
ing a useless and almost intolerable burthen to Great Britain. 

" Your Grace will not be so sanguine as to expect that I am new going 
to tell you that I have succeeded in making this discovery. Sorry am 
I to say, that I have made no further progress than to satisfy myself 
that, a perseverance in the system which has hitherto been pursued, can 



m 




FAILURE OF ENGLISH POLICY. 



Protestant ascendancy had been allowed full swing, yet 
Ireland was not prosperous. Trade had been suppressed 
vigorously, yet England was not. benefited. A few iudi- 
\ iduals certainly gained by the public loss, and these in- 
dividuals contrived to impress the English nation with a 






only lead us from bad to worse, and after exhausting the resources of 
Britain, must end in the total separation of the two countries. 

" The principal personages here who have long been in the habit of 
directing the counsels of the Lords-Lieutenants are perfectly well-in- 
tentioned, and entirely attached and devoted to the British connection ; 
but they are blinded by their passions and prejudices, talk of nothing 
but strong measures, and arrogate to themselves the exclusive know- 
ledge of a country, of which, from their mode of governing it, they have, 
in my opinion, proved themselves totally ignorant. 

" To these men I have shown all civility and kindness in my power, 
and have done for them all ordinary favours which they have asked, but 
I am afraid that they are are not satisfied with me, because I have not 
thrown myself blindly into their hands. With the Chancellor, who can 
with patience listen to the words Papist and Moderation, I have in- 
variably talked on all public points which have occurred, and I have 
shown no marks of confidence to any other set of men, and have par- 
ticularly given no countenance whatever to those who opposed the 
former government. I have at all times received the greatest assist- 
ance from Lord Castlereagh, whose prudence, talents, and temper, I can- 
not sufficiently commend. 

" Xo man will. I believe, 1"- so sanguine as to think that any mea- 
sures which government can adopt would have an immediate effect on 
the minds of the people, and I am by no means prepared to say what 
those should be, which slowly and progressively tend to that most de- 
sirable object. 

" I have hitherto been chiefly occupied in checking the growing evil, 
but so perverse and ungovernable are the tempers here, that I cannot 
Hatter myself that I have been very successful. 

"With regard to future plans. I can only say that seine mode must be 
adopted to soften the hatred of the Catholics to our government." 






terrible fear of losing Ireland, if they were not permitted 
to carry out their selfish policy. Unfortunately, the great 
mass of Englishmen were utterly ignorant of the true 
state of Ireland, and had a traditional belief, not easily 
shaken, that the worst which could be said of her was pro- 
bably far short of the truth. 

There were men, even of rank and station, whom nothing 
could satisfy except a universal massacre of the Irish, who 
prayed for a second Cromwell ; men who were too com- 
pletely blinded by prejudice to be capable of reasoning 
either on the past or the present, — men who could not see, 
or who would not see, that Cromwell's policy was being 
enacted, not in one part of Ireland alone, but from the 
east to the west, wherever Esglish soldiers could be seut. 
And what had Cromwell's policy done— we will not say for 
Ireland, because Ireland was not for a moment considered 
by such persons,— but what had his policy effected in Ire- 
land for English interests? Had it decreased the popula- 
tion of Ireland? For a time, certainly; while the land ran 
rivers of blood, and women and children lay writhing in 
death-throes of agor-y beneath the sword of men who took 
on them to commit the deadliest crimes in the name -of 
the God of mercy. 

Was Ireland more contented, more easily satisfied with 
injustice? Had the great end been gained of making her 
submit in silence to her oppressor ? By no means. All 
history refutes the supposition. What, then, did Croni- 



THE CORSE OF CROMWELL. 




well's policy do for English interests in Ireland ? It 
simply made them a thousand times more precarious than 
ever, — it simply left a legacy of undying hatred to those 
who assisted him in doing his evil will. " The curse of 
Cromwell on you," is to the present day the bitterest 
imprecation that one Irish peasant can use to another, 
and the curse of that man's evil deeds will never 
cease to lie dark and heavy between the English and Irish 
shores. A century of honest, manly, justice to Ireland 
might, indeed, help to repair it, — might blot out the darker 
shades of its iniquity, but it would need some such remedy. 
If Irish rebels burned and pillaged English yeomen, they 
had learned the lesson from Cromwell. He massacred the 
defenceless from the pure love of blood and cruelty; they 
did but strive to defend the defenceless in such fashion as 
they could. 7 

7 We happen to know that the Cromwell theory has not died out yet. 
It has, at least, the merit of simplicity, but it would he a little difficult of 
execution in this nineteenth cent my, \\ hen there would be some millions 
of Irish in America, 

"To know the reason why.'' 

On the 27th July 1798, Lord Clifdon wrote from Dublin to the 
Speaker of the English House of Commons : — 

" There certainlyia a great want of discipline, and the strongest spirit 
of plunder, in the troops. The north is quiet, and will, from all I hear, 
remain so. They don't like to have their throats cut by the southern 

Catholics. Some a 1 priests there are, ami many loyal Catholics, but 

the mass of them are rebels, and the priests who are infected with this 
villany excite them to massacre the Protestants as a means, together 
with the hope of plunder, to drive them on in the rebellion. It is a 




Hiw defenceless the unhappy Irish peasantry were at 
this peinod, is evident from a letter of the Marquis of 
Cornwallis to the Duke of Portland, dated Dublin Castle, 
June 28, 1708, in which he says: — 

"The accounts that you see of the numbers of the enemy de- 
stroyed in every action, are, I conclude, greatly exaggerated . from 
my own knowledge of military affairs, I am sure that a very 
small proportion of them only could be killed in battle; and 1 am 
much afraid that any man in a brown coat, who is found within 
several miles of the field of action, is butchered without discriroi- 
nation. 

"It shall be one of my first objects to soften the ferocity of 
our troops, which I am afraid, in the Irish corps at least, is not 
confined to the private soldiers. 

" I shall use my utmost exertions to suppress the folly which 
has been too prevalent in this quarter, of substituting the word 
Catholicism instead of Jacobinism, as the foundation of the present 
rebellion." 

On the 1st of July he wrote — 

" The violence of our friends, and their folty in endeavouring 



miserable thing to say, but, from all I have seen and know, I am per- 
fectly convinced that while everything round them has improved, the 
minds and feelings of the lower class of the Catholics of Ireland are 
exactly what they were in 1641. This is possible, and what coi I I 
not have believed four months ago, nor at all, had I not seen the proof 
with my own eyes. They are, however, to be brought to reason, . s 
Cromwell brought them then, and by no other means, as the event 
will prove. In my opinion, a union would be the salvation of both 
islands." — Diary of Lord Colchester, vol. i. p. 160. 

It is difficult to understand how the Irish peasantry could have im- 
proved, when they were neither allowed education nor commerce. 



matte it a religious war, added to the ferocity of our troops 
•ho delight in murder, most powerfully counteract all plans of 
mediation. 



" The Irish militia are totally without discipline, contemptible 
before the enemy when any serious resistance is made to them, 
hut ferocious and cruel in the extreme when any poor wretches, 
or her with or without arms, come within their power; in short, 
murder appears to be their favourite pastime. 



r!\ 



"The principal persons of this country, and the members of 
both Houses of Parliament, are, in general, averse to all acts of 
clemency, and although they do not express, and perhaps are too 
much heated to see the ultimate effects which their violence must 
produce, would pursue measures that could only terminate in the 
extirpation of the greater number of the inhabitants, and in the 
utter destruction of the country. The words Papists and Priests 
are for ever in their mouths, and by their unaccountable policy 
they would drive four-fifths of the community into irreconcilable 
rebellion ; and in their warmth they lose sight of the real cause 
of the present mischief, of that deep-laid conspiracy to revolu- 
tionise Ireland on the principles of France, which was originally 
formed, and by wonderful assiduity brought nearly to maturity, 
liy men who had no thought of religion but to destroy it, and who 
knew how to turn the passions and prejudices of the different 
sects to the advancement of their horrible plot for the introduc- 
tion of that most dreadful of all evils, a Jacobin revolution." 

We have given sufficient English authority to show the 
state of [reland at the period of O'Connell's entrance into 
public life. Many Irish authorities might have been quoted, 
but we are so fully aware of English misconception of the 
whole subject, and of the prejudice which exists against the 






T II E S II AC K LETO iVS. 



accc".nts even or Irish ProtestaDts, who have given truthful 
narratives of the times, that we do not introduce their 
authority here. But there is one authority little known, 
and seldom, as far as we are aware, quoted, to which few 
can object, as likely to be prejudiced unduly on either 
side — it is that of the gentle and gifted Mary Leadbetter, 
a member of the Society of Friends. 

Mr Shackleton, Mrs Leadbetter's father, kept a famous 
school at Ballitore, in the county Kildare. The village 
lies on the high road to Cork, about twenty miles from 
Dublin. It was almost a Quaker settlement, but many 
Irish gentlemen were glad to confide the education of their 
sons to the conscientious and able schoolmaster. Mrs 
Leadbetter wrote, amongst other works, "The Annals of 
Ballitore," in which she gives a charming description of 
her home. Edmund Burke was educated there, and kept 
up a life-long correspondence with the Shaekletons, 
honourable alike to master and pupil. His correspondence 
forms a considerable and most interesting portion of the 
volume. All was happy in that happy home till the dread 
hour when the " Irish rising " was put down with merciless 
cruelty. With a few extracts from Mrs Leadbetter's narra- 
tive, we conclude this painful subject. 

The Shackleton family were treated by both sides with 
consideration, though they had a "green 8 cloth" on their 



8 The writer knew a lady, since dead, who was unhappy enough to 
have seen a young man taken up, and hanged without any trial, 01 



table which they did not remove. We suspect the sympathies 
of the gentle Friends were rather with the people; but how 
could it be otherwise, when the people were always eager to 
serve "them in any way? Their house was visited frequently 
both hy the insurgents and the military. The following 
are some of the many scenes of horror which Mrs Lead- 
better records: — 

" Every one seemed to think that safety and security were to be 
found in my brother's house. Thither the insurgents brought 
their prisoners, and thither also their own wounded comrades. It 
was an awful sight to behold in that large parlour such a mingled 
assembly of throbbing, anxious hearts ; my brother's own family, 
silent tears rolling down their faces, the wives of the loyal officers, 
the wives of the soldiers, the wives and daughters of the insurgents, 
the numerous guests, the prisoners, the trembling women — all 
dreading to see the door open, lest some new distress, some fresh 
announcement of horrors, should enter. It was awful ; but every 
scene was now awful, and we knew not what a day might bring 
forth. 

" Young girls dressed in white, with green ribbons, and carrying 
pikes, accompanied the insurgents. They had patrols and a 
countersign, but it was long before they could decide upon the 
password. 

even attempt at a trial, simply because lie wore a necktie which was 
partly green. One of the favourite ballads of the period, and which 
indeed is still sung by the peasants, alludes to this as a common 
practice. " The Wearing of the Green" is perhaps one of the most 
soul-stirring of all the Irish rebel-songs — 

" Ok ! such a wretched country 
As this was never seeu, 
For they're hanging men and women, 
For the wearing of the green." 




" At length they fixed upon the word " scourges." Sentinels 
were placed in various parts of the village. One day as I went 
to my brothers, a sentinel called to a man who walked with me 
not to advance on pain of being shot. The sentinel was my 
former friend "the Canny." I approached him, and asked, would 
he would shoot me if I proceeded t " Shoot you ! " exclaimed 
he, taking my hand and kissing it, adding a eulogium on the 
Quakers. 

" I told him it would be well if they were all of our way of 
thinking, for then there would be no such work as the present. 
I thought I could comprehend " the Canny's " incoherent answer, 
"Ay! but you know our Saviour — the scourges, oh! the 
scourges ! " 



Then raising himself in his stirrups, he revoked the orders given to 
his men to fire upon every man in coloured clothes. Oh, rash and 
cruel orders, which exposed to such danger lives of such value, 
which if thus sacrificed no regrets could have restored ! Nothing 
can justify such commands. 



" Soldiers came in for milk ; some of their countenances were 
pale with anger, and they grinned at me, calling me names which I 
had never heard before. They said I had poisoned the milk which 
I gave them, and desired me to drink some, which I did with much 
indignation. Others were civil, and one inquired if we had had 
any United Irishmen in the house. I told them we had. In that 
fearful time the least equivocation, the least deception, appeared 
to me to be fraught with danger. The soldier continued his 
inquiry — ' Had they plundered us V ' No, except of eating and 
drinking.' ' Oh, free quarters,' he replied, smiled and went away. 
A fine looking man, a soldier, came in in an extravagant passion ; 
neither his rage nor my terror could prevent me from observing 
that this man was strikingly handsome ; he asked me the same 
questions in the same terms, and I made the same answer. He 

N 



cursed me with grtat bitterness, and raising his musket, presented 
it to my breast. I desired him not to shoot me. It seemed as 
if he had the will but not the power to do so. He turned from 
me. dashed pans and jugs off the kitchen table with his musket, 
and shattered the kitchen window. Terrified almost out of my 
wits, I ran out of the house, followed by several women almost as 
much frightened as myself. When I fled my fears gained strength, 
and I believed my enemy was pursuing ; I thought of throwing 
myself into the river at the foot of the garden, thinking the 
bullet could not hurt me in the water. One of our servants ran 
into the street to call for help. William Richardson and Charles 
Coote, who kindly sat on their horses outside our windows, came 
in and turned the ruffian out of the house. That danger passed, 
I beheld from the back window of our parlour the dark-red flames 
of Gavin's house, and others, rising above the green of the trees. 
At the same time, a fat tobacconist from Carlow lolled upon one of 
our chairs, and talked boastingly of the exploits performed by the 
military whom he had accompanied ; how they had shot several, 
adding, ' We burned one fellow in a barrel.' I never in my life 
felt disgusted so strongly ; it even overpowered the horror due to 
the deed which had been actually committed-" 



M 



4 1 







d : scomfort, wandering about and unable to eat. At last, when T 
could no longer battle it out, I gave up and went to bed. Old 
Doctor Moriarty was sent for : lie pronounced me in a high fever. 
I was in such pain that I wished to die. In my ravings I fancied 
that I was in the middle of a wood, and that the branches were 
on fire around me. I felt my backbone stiffening for death, and 
I positively declare that I think what saved me was the effort I 
made to rise up, and show my father, who was at my bedside, 
that I knew him. I verily believe that effort, of nature averted 
death. During my illness I used to quote from the tragedy of 
Douglas these lines — 

'Unknown I die ; no tongue shall speak of me ; 
Some noble spirits, judging by themselves, 
May yet conjecture what I might have proved ; 
And think life only wanting to my fame.' 

I used to quote those lines under the full belief that my illness 
would end fatally. Indeed, long before that period — when I was 
seven years old — yes, indeed, as long as ever I can recollect. I 
always felt a presentiment that I should write my "name on the 
page of history. I hated Saxon domination. I detested the 
tyrants of Ireland. During the latter part of my illness, Doctor 
Moriarty told me that Buonaparte had got his whole army to 
Alexandria, across the desert. ' That is impossible,' said I, ' he 
cannot have done so; they would have starved.' 'Oh. no,' re- 
plied the doctor, 'they had a quantity of portable soup with 
them, sufficient to feed the whole army for four days.' ' Ay,' 
rejoined I, 'but had they portable water? For their portable 
soup would have been of little use if they had not water to dis- 
solve it in.' My father looked at the attendants with an air of 
hope. Doctor Moriarty said to my mother, 'His intellect, at any 
rate, is untouched.' " 

This illness occurred in August 1798, and immediately 
after his recovery he went on circuit. Of this event he 















:(«J 



LEA VINO HOME. 



^Qi . 



has also left a record, or rather the record as given by him- 
self has beeu preserved by his faithful friend Mr Daunt. 

Travelling then in Kerry, 9 or indeed in any part of the 
world, was by no means the easy and rapid affair it is 
now. O'Coimell left home at four o'clock in the mornino- 
on horseback, accompanied by his brother John, who was 
bound for the more congenial occupation of hunting. 
O'Connell was passionately fond of sport, and tenderly 
attached to his whole family, so that the parting had a 
double pang. We give the remainder of the narrative in 
O'Connell's own words : — 

" I looked after him, from time to time, until he was out of 
sight, and then I cheered up my spirits as well as I could; I had 
left home at such an early hour, that I was in Tralee at half-past 



8 Until the year 1825, when the Limerick mail-coach was established, 
post-chaises, sometimes of the rudest construction, were the only means 
of conveyance. Two well-known Tralee charactei -. I >.i vy 1 d ig and Jack 
Hackney, kept these coaches, and with rope shrouds rigged under the 
bodies of them to assist or preserve the springs. They tuok six or seven 
hours going from Tralee to Listowel — a distance of eighteen miles — 
stopped there that night, the next day journeying as far as New bridge, 
where another night was spent, and the third day they reached Lime- 
rick. The journey between Tralee and Limerick is performed at present 
b\ rail in about five hours. « 

The first four-horse mail was driven into Kerry from Cork on the 
11th of August 1810, by old Mich Daly, a famous Jehu, whose chirrup 
was the delight of his horses, and who made the noble and creditable 
boast that " a ha'porth of whipcord " would last a twelvemonth. He 
had a theory, rather old-fashioned, we must fear, that " beating horses 
was not driving them." He proved his theory by practice, and we 
sincerely wish we had a few more imitators. But good driving requires 
suiue intellectual effort ; and brute furce, which the prosecutions of the 



twelve. I got my horse fed, and, thinking it was as well to push 
on, I remounted him, and took the road to Tarbert by Listowell. 
A few miles further on, a shower of rain drove me under a bridge 
fur shelter. While I stayed there, the rain sent Robert Hickson 
also under the bridge. He saluted me, and asked me where I 
was going 1 I answered, ' To Tarbert.' — ' Why so late 1 ' said 
Hickson. ' I am not late,' said I. ' I have been up since four 
o'clock this morning.' — 'Why, where do you come from?' — 'From 
Carhen.' Hickson looked astonished, for the distance was near 
fifty Irish miles. But he expressed his warm approval of my 
activity. ' You'll do, young gentleman,' said he ; ' I see you'll do.' 
1 then rode on, and got to Tarbert about five in the afternoon — 
full sixty miles Irish from Carhen. There wasn't one book to be 
lunl at the inn. I had no acquaintance in the town ; and I 
felt my spirits low enough at the prospect of a long, stupid even- 
ing. But I was relieved by the sudden appearance of Ealph 



Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals shows to be very 
much in vogue at the other side of the Channel, is within the reach of 
every man, however degraded, who lias a strung arm. 

The judges in the eighteenth century at least, travelled direct from 
Limerick to Tralee, and were particular about the Mate of the roads, 
for they fined the county Kerry one hundred pounds for not keeping the 
"great circuit road" in proper repair. 

The first hotel of any importance in Tralee was set up by Dick 
Thornton, and was styled the Denny Arms. Dick, a*, usual in such 
cases, was a retired servant. He had been coachman to Sir Barry 
] )enny, but having b< come incapacitated for that position by a fall from 
his seat of authority, the coach-box — he was set up as hotel-keeper, and 
provided with a wooden leg. 

The Blennerhassets, too, had their hotel, conducted by Sam Benner, 
who was also a post-master, and is said to have advanced the art uf 
Locomotion by his strenuous efforts to keep up and improve his busi- 
ness, faddy Devine represented the Crosbie interest. His hotel, as 
in duty bound, was called the Crosbie Arms. He is reported to have 
been an extensive farmer, and, moreover kept race-horses. 



O'COyXELL'S FORTE. 



Marshall, an old friend of mine, who came to the inn to dress for 
a ball that took place in Tarbert that night. He asked me to 
accompany him to the ball. ' Why,' said I, ' I have ridden sixty 
miles.' ' Oh, you don't seem in the least tired,' said he, ' so come 
along.' Accordingly I went, and sat up until two o'clock in the 
morning, dancing." 

A few hours' sleep was sufficient to refresh the hardy 
youth, and he rode off to the Limerick assizes to make 
his first public appearance as a barrister. How little he 
could have anticipated, as he rode quietly and unnoticed 
into the grand old city of the Violated Treaty, 1 and glanced 
at the stone which commemorates Irish bravery and 
English bad faith, how triumphantly he should one day 
be received there himself! 

He at once distinguished himself as a cross-examiner, 
which was undoubtedly his great forte at the bar. This 
department of the legal profession requires a tact and 
talent peculiar to itself, and which is often wanting in 
those who were gifted in other ways with the highest 
forensic ability. Woe to the unhappy man who gets into 
the witness box with a secret ; he might make a thousand 
resolutions to keep it to himself, — he might succeed with 
some cross-examiners, but certaiuly not when O'Conuell 
was counsel. 

He laughed, he cajoled, he rarely threatened, he began a 



1 The particulars of the Violated Treaty are too well-known to need 

i ■ than a passing allusion. It is certainly one of the worst breaches. 

of faith on record. 




EXAMINING A WITNESS. 



cheerful conversation in most confidential terms. The half- 
pleased, half-bewildered witness " did not know where he 
was." This agreeable gentleman surely could have no 
ulterior designs in all this. Precisely when the unhappy 
man was thoroughly off his guard, out came the question. 
It was generally answered with a second's hesitation, and 
O'Connell sat down triumphant. 

He had a singular facility, a gift which cannot be ac- 
quired by any amount of practice, of seizing the salient 
points of a subject at one glance. He not only asked well, 
but he knew exactly what to ask. In ten minutes he 
would extract as much information from a witness, as a 
more practised but less gifted barrister would attain in half 
an hour. 

At the Tralee assizes he held a brief from Jerry Keller, 
a noted attorney. O'Connell had to examine a witness 
about whose sobriety there was some question. The wit- 
ness would not convict himself. He declared he had his 
" share of a pint of whisky." His sobriety depended on 
the amount of the " share." O'Connell asked him by 
virtue of his oath, was not his share all but the pewter ; and 
amid a roar of laughter the unhappy victim of forensic 
dexterity was obliged to admit that it was. O'Connell, in 
relating the story afterwards, said, "The oddity of my 
mode of putting the question was very successful, and 
created a general and hearty laugh. Jerry Keller repeated 
the encouragement Robert Hicksou had already bestowed 



\y? A ^ 






P 

fa 



(§ 



upon my activity, in the very same words, ' You '11 do, 
young gentleman ! you '11 do!' " 

Mr Hicksou's history was a curious exemplification of 
the state of the times. He turned Protestant to save his 
property, and was twice High Sheriff of Kerry. When the 
penal code was relaxed, he went back to his old faith to 
save his conscience, having, however, first made very sure 
that this proceeding would not injure his temporal pro- 
sperity. 

0"Connell used to tell some capital bar stories. 

" The cleverest rogue in the profession that ever I heard of," lie 
said, on one occasion, " was one Checkley, familiarly known by 
the name of < Checkley-be-d— d.' Checkley was agent once at 
the Cork assizes for a fellow accused of burglary and aggravated 
assault committed at Bantry. The noted Jerry Keller wis coun- 
sel for the prisoner, against whom the charge was made out by 
the clearest circumstantial evidence; so clearly, that it seemed 
quite impossible to doubt his guilt. When the case for the pro- 
secution closed, the judge asked if there were any witnesses for 
the defence. ' Yes, my lord,' said Jerry Keller, ' I have three 
briefed to me.' ' Call them,' said the judge. Checkley immedi- 
ately bustled out of court, and returned at once, leading in a very 
respectable-looking, farmer-like man, with a blue coat and gilt 
buttons, scratch wig, corduroy tights, and gaiters. ' This is a 
witness to character, my lord,' said Checkley. Jerry Keller (the 
counsel) forthwith began to examine the witness. After asking 
him his name and residence, 'You know the prisoner in the dock V 
said Keller. ' Yes, your honour, ever since he was a gorsoon !' 
'And what is his general character?' said Keller. ' Ogh the 
devil a worse!' 'Why, what sort of a witness is this you've 
brought? ' cried Keller, passionately, flinging down his brief, and 



aking furiously at Checkley ; ' he has ruined us ! ' 'He may 
prove an alibi, however,' returned Checkley; 'examine him to 
alibi as instructed in your brief.' Keller accordingly resumed his 
examination. ' Where was the prisoner on the 10th instant?' 
said he. ' He was near Castlemartyr,' answered the witness. 
' Are you sure of that t ' ' Quite sure, counsellor ! ' ' How do 
you know with such certainty 1 ' ' Because upon that very night 
1 was returning from the fair, and when I got near my own house, 
I saw the prisoner a little way on before me — I 'd swear to him 
anywhere. He was dodging about, and I knew it could be for 
no good end. So I slipped into the field, and turned off my horse 
to grass ; and while I was w.atching the lad from behind the 
ditch. I saw him pop across the wall into my garden and steal a 
lot of parsnips and carrots ; and, what I thought a great dale 
worse of, he stole a bran-new English spade I had got from my 
landlord, Lord Shannon. So, faix ! I cut away after him, but as 
I was tired from the day's labour, and he being fresh and nimble, 
I wasn't able to ketch him. But next day my spade was seen 
surely in his house, and that 's the same rogue in the dock ! I 
wish I had a hoult of him.' ' It is quite evident,' said the judge, 
that we must acquit the prisoner ; the witness has clearly estab- 
lished an alibi for him; Castlemartyr is nearly sixty miles from 
vmtiy ; and he certainly is anything but a partisan of his. Pray, 
friend,' addressing the witness, ' will you swear informations 
against the prisoner for his robbery of your property ] ' ' Truth 
i will, my lord ! with all the pleasure in life, if your lordship 
thinks I can get any satisfaction out of him. I 'm tould I can for 
the spade, but not for the carrots and parsnips.' ' Go to the 
Crown Office and swear informations,' said the judge. 

" The prisoner was of course discharged, the alibi having clearly 
been established ; in an hour's time some inquiry was made as to 
whether Checkley's rural witness had sworn informations in the 
Crown Office. That gentleman was not to be heard of: the 
prisoner also had vanished immediately on being discharged — 
and of course resumed his mal-practices forthwith. It needs 





hardly be told, that Lord Shannon's soi-disant tenant dealt a little 
in fiction, and that the whole story of his farm from that nobleman, 
and of the prisoner's thefts of the spade and the vegetables, was a 
pleasant device of Mr Checkley's. I told this story," continued 
O'Connell, " to a coterie of English barristers with whom I dined ; 
and it was most diverting to witness their astonishment at Mr 
Checkley's unprincipled ingenuity. Stephen Rice, the assistant 
barrister, had so high an admiration of this clever rogue, that lie 
declared he would readily walk fifty miles to see Checkley ! " 

The Tralee court-house was the scene of some curious 
episodes. One of these was thus related by O'Connell : — 

" O'Grady was on one occasion annoyed at the disorderly noise 
in the court-house at Tralee. He bore it quietly for some time, 
expecting that Denny (the High Sheriff) would interfere to restore 
order. Finding, however, that Denny, who was reading in his 
box, took no notice of the riot, O'Grady rose from the bench, and 
called out to the studious High Sheriff, ' Mr Denny, I just got up 
to hint that I 'm afraid the noise in the court will prevent you 
from reading your novel in quiet.' 

" After O'Grady had retired from the bench, some person placed 
a large stuffed owl on the sofa beside him. The bird was of enor- 
mous size, and had been brought as a great curiosity from the 
tropics. O'Grady looked at the owl for a moment, and then said 
with a gesture of peevish impatience, ' Take away that owl ! take 
away that owl ! If you don't, I shall fancy I am seated again on 
the Exchequer Bench beside Baron Foster ! ' 

" Those who have seen Baron Foster on the bench, can best 
appreciate the felicitous resemblance traced by his venerable 
brother judge between his lordship and an old stuffed owl.' 

" Judge O'Grady was by no means deficient in wit. Mr Purcell 
O'Gorman, previously to emancipation, was one of the most violent 
out-and-out partisans of the Catholic party. He often declared 
that I did not £0 far enough. We were once standing together in 



TRIED FOR MELODIOUS PRACTICES. 



the inn at Ennis, and I took up a prayer-book which lay in the 
window, and said, kissing it, ' By virtue of this book, I will not 
take place or office from the Government, until emancipation is 
carried. Now, Purcell, my man ! will you do as much ? ' Purcell 
O'Gornian put the book to his lips, but immediately put it away, 
saying, ' I won't swear ; I needn't ! my word is as good as my 
oath — I am sure of my own fidelity ! ' When Chief Baron O'Grady 
heard this story, he remarked, 'They were both quite right. Go- 
vernment has nothing worth O'Connell's while to take, until 
emancipation be carried ; but anything at all would be good 
enough for Purcell O'Gorman.' " 

Some waggish barrister having accused Nicholas Purcell 
O'Gorman of being a musician, the charge was stoutly 
denied by the accused person. 

" A jury," said O'Connell, " was thereupon impannelled to try 
the defendant, who persisted in pleading ' Not guilty ' to the 
indictment for melodious practices. The jury consisted of Con 
Lyne, under twelve different aliases- — such as ' Con of the Seven 
Bottles,' ' Con of the Seven Throttles,' ' Crim-Con,' and so 
forth. The prosecutor then proceeded to interrogate the defen- 
dant : — ' By virtue of your oath, Mr O'Gorman, did you never 
play on any musical instrument ) ' — ' Never, on my honour ! ' re- 
plied Purcell. ' Come, sir, recollect yourself. By virtue of your 
oath, did you never play second fiddle to O'Connell ? ' — The fact 
was too notorious to admit of any defence, and the unanimous jury 
accordingly returned a verdict of guilty." 

O'Connell once received a singular compliment from one 
of his clients whom he had unsuccessfully defended for 
cow-stealing — 

" I was once," said he. " counsel for a cow-stealer, who was 
clearly convicted — the sentence was transportation for fourteen 
years. At the end of that time he returned, and happening to 
meet me, he began to talk about the trial. I asked him how he 



LESSON IN COW-STEALING GRATIS. 



207 



had always managed to steal the fat cows ; to which he gravely 
answered : — ' Why, then, I'll tell your honour the whole secret of 
that, sir. Whenever your honour goes to steal a row, always go on 
the worst night you can, for it' the weather is very bad, the chances 
are that nobody will be up to see your honour. The way you '11 
always know the fat cattle in the dark is by this token — that the 
fat cows always stand out in the more exposed places, but the 
lean ones always go into the ditch for shelter.' So," continued 
O'Connell, "I got that lesson in cow stealing gratis from my 
worthy client." 

O'Connell visited Limerick, Cork, and Tralee in this 
circuit. He then posted to Dublin with Harry Deane Grady. 
The journey was long and dangerous. 2 The rebellion bad 
been crushed by brute force, but the fire was still smoulder- 
ing, and bands of bunted men, who were unable to work, 
because there was no work for them to do, and who could 
at best sell their lives dearly, haunted the mountains in 



! v 

In, 

b 



2 O'Connell often contrasted the rapid mode of modern travelling with 
the slower movements of past days.. " I remember," said he, " when I 
left Darrynane for London in 1795, my first day's journey was to Carhen 
— my second to Killorglin — my third to Tralee — my fourth to Limerick 
— two days thence to Dublin. I sailed from Dublin in the evening — 
my passage to Holyhead was performed in twenty-four hours ; from 
Holyhead to Chester, took six-and-thirty hours ; from Chester to London, 
three days. My uncle kept a diary of a tour he made in England be- 
tween the years '70 and '80, and one of his memorabilia was ' This day 
we have travelled thirty-six miles, and passed through part of five 
counties.' In 1780, the two members for the county of Kerry sent to 
Dublin for a noddy, and travelled together in it from Kerry to Dublin. 
The journey occupied seventeen days ; and each night the two members 
quartered themselves at the house of some friend ; and on the seven- 
teenth day they reached Dublin, just in time for the commencement of 
the session. I remember in 1817 dodging for eight hours about Caernar- 



different parts of Ireland. Every man's hand was against 
them, and their hand was against every man. 

A party had taken up their abode in the Kilworth moun- 
tains through which O'Connell and his companion were 
obliged to pass. In the evening, while resting at the Ferrnoy 
inn, four dragoons came in, one of whom was a corporal. 
O'Connell and his companion were anxious to provide them- 
selves with ammunition, but this was by no means easy to 
obtain. Mr Grady opened negotiations with the corporal — 

" Soldier, will you sell me some powder and ball 1 " 

" Sir, I don't sell powder," replied the corporal, who in his own 
opinion was no soldier. 

" Will you then have the goodness to buy me some 1 " said 
Grady; "in these unsettled times the dealers in the article are 
reluctant to sell it to strangers like us." 

" Sir," replied the corporal, " I am no man's messenger but tl^e 
king's — go yourself." 

"Grady," said O'Connell in a low tone, "you have made a 
great mistake. Did you not see by the mark on his sleeve that 



von Harbour before we could land. When on shore, I proceeded to 
Capelcarrig, where I was taken very ill ; and I was not consoled by re- 
flecting that should my illness threaten life, there was no Catholic priest 
within forty miles of me." Among other illustrations of the state of 
tilings in the yood old days of Tory rule, he recorded the fate of a poor 
half-witted creature called " Jack of the roads," who, in tin- earlier part 
of the century, used to run alongside the Limerick coaches : — " He once 
made a bet of fourpenee and a pot of porter that he would run to Dublin 
from Limerick, keeping pace with the mail. He did so, and when he 
was passing through Mountrath on his return, on the 12th of July 1807 
or 1808, he flourished a green bough at a party of Orangemen « ho were 
holding their orgies. One of them fired at his face ; his eyes were de- 
stroyed — he lingered and died — and there was an end of poor Jack." 



the man is a corporal? You mortified his pride in calling him a 
soldier, especially before his own men, amongst whom he doubt- 
less plays the officer." 

Having suffered a few minutes to elapse, O'Connell entered into 
conversation with the dragoon : 

" Did you ever see such rain as we had to-day, sergeant? I was 
very glad to find that the regulars had not the trouble of escort- 
ing the judges. It was very suitable work for those awkward 
yeomen." 

" Yes, indeed, sir,'' returned the corporal, evidently flattered at 
being mistaken for a sergeant, "we were very lucky in escaping 
those torrents of rain." 

" Perhaps, sergeant, you will have the kindness," continued 
O'Connell, " to buy me some powder and ball in town. We are 
to pass the Kil worth mountains, and shall want ammunition. You 
can, of course, find no difficulty in buying it ; but it is not to 
every one they sell these matters." 

" Sir," said the corporal, " I shall have great pleasure in re* 
questing your acceptance of a small supply of powder and ball. 
My balls will, I think, just fit your pistols. You'll stand in need 
of ammunition, for there are some of those out-lying rebelly rascals 
on the mountains." 

" Dan," said Grady, in a low tone, " you'll go through the world 
successfully, that I can easily foresee." 8 

And Dan did go through the world successfully. 



3 The last remaining robber was shot about the year 1810, by the 
jiostmaster of Fermoy. Several persons had been robbed a short time 
previously ; whereupon the postmaster and another inhabitant of Fer- 
moy hired a chaise and drove to the mountains of Kilworth. The 
robber spied the chaise, came to rob, upon which the postmaster shot 
him dead. 

" There was," said O'Connell, "a narrow causeway thrown across a 
glen, which formed a peculiarly dangerous part of the old road : it was 

O 




A LOSING GAME TO PLAY. 



O'ConnelPs first speech was made in opposition to the 
union. Fortunately a copy of this most important docu- 
ment has been preserved. It was the key-note to 
O'Connell's political life, and from this first declaration 
of his principles he never departed or swerved for a second. 
His family were against him, and especially his uncle 
Maurice, to whom he owed his education. Political life was 
a dangerous game, and a losing one, and old " Hunting- 
cap," though he lived all his life in the wilds of Kerry, knew 



undefended by guard-walls, and too narrow for two carriages to pass 
abreast. The post-boys used to call it 'the delicate bit ;' and a ticklish 
spot it surely was on a dark night, approached at one end from a steep 
declivity." 

O'Connell used to tell a good story of his friend Harry Grady — " I 
remember a good specimen of his skill in cross-examination at an assizes 
at Tralee, where he defended some still-owners who had recently had a 
scuffle with five soldiers. The soldiers were witnesses against the still- 
owners. Harry Grady cross-examined each soldier in the following 
manner, out of hearing of his brethren, who were kept out of court : — 
' Well, soldier, it Was a murderous scuffle, wasn't it \ ' — ' Yes.' — ' But you 
weren't afraid 1 ' — ' No.' — ' Of course you weren't. It is part of your 
sworn duty to die in the king's service if needs must. Cut. if you were 
not afraid, maybe others were not quite so brave ? Were any of your 
comrades frightened ? Tell the truth now.'—' Why, indeed, sir, I can't 
say but they were.' — 'Ah, I thought so. Come, now, name the men 
who were frightened — on your oath, now.' 

" The soldier then named every one of his four comrades. He wa& 
then sent down, and another soldier called upon the table, to whom 
Grady addressed precisely the same set of queries, receiving precisely the 
same answers ; until at last he got each of the five soldiers to swear, 
that lie alone had fought the still-owners bravely, and that all his foui 
comrades were cowards. Thus Harry succeeded in utterly discrediting 
th'e soldiers' evidence against his clients." 



Vh 



\-A 



1 



WANT OF UNITY. 



quite enough of public affairs to make him anxious to keep 
Darrynane in the family, and to keep young Dau's head on 
his shoulders. But young Dan was thoroughly capable of 
taking care of himself, and he continued to steer through 
the difficult period of the Union without any personal in- 
convenience. 

The Union was formally brought before the English 
Houses of Parliament by messages from the Crown on the 
22d of January 1799, but Mr Pitt had laid his plans for 
it as far back as 1784, when he came into office. He set 
himself to work with that steady determination which is 
the best promise of success, and with that unscrupulous 
disregard of justice which generally serves for a time. The 
difficulties he met with, and probably the steady opposition 
of his powerful rival, Fox, were a further incentive. 

Fox had very clear ideas of Irish policy for an English 
statesman. He saw that the divisions of the Irish them- 
selves — those divisions with which they have been so fre- 
quently taunted, and which are so little understood — were 
the principal cause of the misfortunes of this unhappy 
country. He could not understand why Irish politicians 
would not work together, 4 and forgot that English poli- 



" February 8th, 1799. 

4 " If the Irish would stick to one another, they might play a game 

that would have more chance of doing good, than any that has been in 

question for a long time.- They might win tin- battle that we lost in 1784, 

and which after all is the pivot upon which everything turns. They ought 



fj 



ticiaus were equally, though not so disastrously divided. 
He did not understand, what we fear has never yet been 
thoroughly understood, the state of government in Ireland, 
and why Irishmen were disunited, or only united in parties 
i" oppose each other. 

The only attempt at a Republican government in Ire- 
hind had been the Parliament of Kilkenny, held by the 
Confederates in 1645. It was certainly some sort of satis- 
faction to the nation at large to feel that they had any kind 
of national representation ; the meeting of a Parliament in 
Dublin gave a certain appearance of status to the country, 
but it was only an appearance. The members of both 
Houses were, with a very few exceptions, members of the 
English Government; the nation was not represented. 
Ireland was a Catholic nation, yet not one single Catholic 
could raise his voice in that assembly. Irishmen were 
allowed to vote, and after a time Catholics were allowed to 
vote nominally; but the vote was only nominal, it was 
little mure than a badge of slavery ; for woe to the free- 
holder who dared to have an Opinion of his own ! woe to the 
"independent elector" who availed himself of his supposed 
independence. 

The majority, the vast majority, of those who sat in the 



to be very careful to confine themselves, however, to Irish ministers, 
and -real officers in Ireland, and they would be in no danger (unless I 
am very much deceived indeed) of being deserted by the people, as wo 
were." — Fox's Letters, vol. iv. p. 157. 




Irish House of Lords, and the Irish House of Commons, 
were men who had no Irish interests whatever, who, far 
from having such interests, actually hated and scorned the 
men whom they were supposed to represent. They had one 
god, and they worshipped him with unfailing devotion — 
for him they were ready to sacrifice honour, principle, 
and self-respect; for him they were willing to imbrue 
their hands in the very life-blood of the unhappy men 
whose interests they were supposed to represent. 5 

I'itt knew perfectly well the difficulties he would have to 
meet in effecting his purpose. He had four classes to deal 
with, and he dealt with them one by one with a masterly 
ability worthy of a better cause. 



5 Fox wrote to Lord Holland on the 19th of January 1799 : — 
"I own I think, according to the plan with which you have set out, that 
you ought to attend the Union ; nor do I feel much any of your objec- 
tions, I mean to attendance, for in all those to the Union I agree with 
you entirely. If it were only for the state of representation in their 
House of Commons, I should object to it ; but when you add the state 
of the country, it is the most monstrous proposition that ever was made. 
"What has given rise to the report of my being fur it I cannot guess, as 
exclusive of temporary objections I never had the least liking to the 
measure, though I confess I have less attended to the arguments pro and 
eon than perhaps I otherwise should have done, from a full conviction 
that it was completely impossible. You know, I dare say, that my 
general principle in politics is very much against the one uni indivisible, 
ami it' I were to allow myself a leaning to any extreme it would be to 
thai < if Federalism, Pray, therefore, whenever you hear my opinion men- 
tioned, declare for me my decided disapprobation ; not that I would have 
my wish to have this known a reason fur your attendance, however, if 
otherwise you wish to stay away.'' — F<>x's Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 150. 




He had to deal with the people of Ireland, with those 
units who are considered so insignificant when counted 
by ones, who are so terribly formidable when you come 
to add the ones, and discover that they amount to millions. 
A multitude is terribly formidable even without leaders, 
even when they are held iu chains. The English minister 
knew this, and crushed the multitude. If it did cost some 
millions of money, what matter ! his was an extravagant 
administration, and he hoped to revenge himself after the 
U n inn. As to the lives, the agony, the legacy of hatred, 
all that " went without saying." Perhaps he deplored the 
blood and crime a little, not having the brutal nature of 
Cromwell, who delighted in it, but he consoled himself 
with the reflection that state policy requires sacrifice. 

The benefit of England was the one grand object.* It 

6 This was no secret. In 1699, Sir Richard Cox wrote a work, en- 
titled " The English Interest in Ireland," proposing a Union in the fol- 
lowing words : — 

" It is your interest to unite and incorporate us with England ; for 
by that means the English interest will always be prevalent here, and the 
kingdom as secure to you as Wales, or any county in England. Your 
taxes will he lessened when we bear part of the burden. . . . All our 
money nil still centre ut London; and our trade and communication 
with England will be bo considerable, that we shall think ourselves at 
linine when there ; and where one goes thither now, then ten will go 
when all our business is transacted in your Parliament, to which, if we 
send sixty-four knights for our thirty-two counties, ten lords, and six 
bishops, tin ij may spend our money, hit c mnot influence your councils to 
your disadvantage. . . . By the Union, England xoill get much of our 
money, and abundance of on,- trade." 

This man was a specimen of the class of men who carried the Union 






(#fB 






was right, it was more than justifiable that Englishmen 
should seek the advancement of their own nation above all 

|'i_ ! ,\ things, but they were equally hound ii^ common honesty 

either to treat Irish interests as synonymous with their 
own, or to leave Ireland perfectly free to look after her 
own interests. It was not just to treat her as a dependency, 
or rather as a country which was to he used solely for 
the interests of those who had made themselves her masters 

it') by force of arms. 

i% J Fox was probably the only English statesman of his 

time who had thoroughly clear ideas as to the duty and the 
good. policy of making English and Irish interests coincide 
He held and expressed strong views as to the power of the 
people, and was decidedly of opinion that Parliament could 
not make a Union between the two countries either with 
legal or moral right, unless Parliament had the sanction of 
the people. 

" Supposing the Stamp Act were beneficial to America, 

or who represented Ireland. Though Irish by birth, his interests were 
wholly English. 

In 1751, Sir Matthew Dicker wrote " Essays on Trade," in which he 
said : — 

" By a union with Ireland the taxes of Great Britain will be les- 
sened." In 1767, Postlethwayte wrote a work, entitled " Britain's Com- 
mercial Interest," in which he said : " By the Union, Ireland would soon 
be enabled to pay a million a year towards the taxes of Great Britain ; 
the riches of Ireland would chiefly return to England, she containing 
the seat of empire ; the Irish lairds would be little better than tenants to 
her, for allowing them the privilege of making the best of their rela- 
tions."— P. 203. 



Parliament was not competent in any sense of the word 
tu enact it. Supposing a Union would be beneficial to 
Ireland, Parliament again is not competent to enact it, 
because it is not within its commission to destroy the con- 
stitution which it is instituted to support, even thougb it 
should place a better in its stead; and here comes in with 
propriety what Locke says, that Parliament is to make 
laws and not legislatures. I cannot think, for instance, 
that Parliament is competent to declare Great Britain an 
absolute monarchy, or a republic, though it should 
be of opinion that the change would be for the 
better. For such revolutions there must be a known 
opinion of the people, and though such opinion be difficult 
to collect legally, yet for practical purposes it may be col- 
lected in a practical way, as I contend that it was, or at 
least that it was pretended to be, in 1688 and 1706. It is 
said that this reasoning goes to say, that Parliament, which 
is instituted to improve, cannot be competent to impair 
the Constitution ; the answer is, that whether a projected 
alteration be an improvement or an injury, is a question 
upon which Parliament is commissioned to judge, but 
annihilation (which Union must be allowed to be) 
is not within their commission. That it is arnihila- 
tion, I, of course, suppose proved, before I deny the com- 
petence." 

We have seen how Mr Pitt dealt with the people. His 
mode of dealing with the upper classes was far more simple 



m 



and effective. They wanted money, and be flung it about 
with reckless prodigality. The sale of boroughs was always 
a profitable source of income to Anglo-Irish noblemen. 
They were a needy race, and by no means satisfied with 
their poverty. In their folly and infatuation they en- 
couraged the rebellion, forgetting that they were but im- 
poverishing themselves. They soon learned their fatal 
mistake, but they had not the wisdom to discern the 
remedy. 

It was always hard for the Irish tenant to pay his rent, 
oecause he was not allowed a straw for his bricks, though 
the bricks were required all the same ; but after the rebel- 
lion there was a deficiency of tenants, and no amount of 
torture could wring money from the hapless few who re- 
mained to till the impoverished soil. The circulation of the 
Bank of Ireland also was discredited, and, of course, the 
poor were the sufferers. The tenants were obliged to pay 
in gold when they could be made pay at all, but the scar- 
city was so great that the tradesmen were paid in paper 
money, thus throwing the burden still on the people. 7 



7 On the 8th June 1799, Lord Devonshire wrote to Lord Castlereagh . 
" Whilst I have the pen in my hand, I beg leave to trespass upon your 
Lordship a little longer, to state a great grievance that this part of the 
world labours under, which, if possible, ought to Vie stopped — that is, the 
sale of the gold coin. When Government thought tit, two or three 
years ago, to encourage the circulation of bank paper, that traffic began. 
I gave all the assistance I could to Government in their object, and 
took bank paper in my office for rent, which I still continue to do, whirl:, 



BRIBERY AND INCAPABILITY. 



The bribery system was not made any secret. Gentle- 
men knew their worth, and were by no means modest 
in proclaiming it. If they were to sell honour and 
conscience, at least they meant to have the full value of 
both. 

Lord Cornwallis wrote to Major-General Ros« on the 23d 
November 1798, and gave some charmingly naive descrip- 
tions of how affairs were being managed. He was obliged 
to talk a great deal, and found it a bore. He thought the 
Catholics might as well have got the benefit of what was 
going, they, at the very time, being kept under the de- 
lusion that they were to be included. He declared the 
Lords-Lieutenant had been idle and incapable, yet Irish 
men were wildly blamed if they were not loyal to them , 



I believe, none of my neighbours do. I understand Lord Hertford, 
Lord Donegal, Lord Londonderry, &c, never have and do not take any 
paper for their rents ; but now I cannot pay a bill to any tradesman in 
Belfast or the country, in bank notes, without allowing from threepence 
to eightpence in every guinea. I understand it is the same hi the pay 
of the army. The conduct of the Lank of Ireland is so illiberal, if not 
illegal, and, besides, take so little pains to stop forgeries upon them, that 
I shall no longer take their paper as rent in my office. There is scarce 
a remittance made to Dublin but two or three notes are returned as 
forged. They have left off defacing the note, indeed, as they used to 
do, by which a poor honest man lost eight five-pound notes that my 
agent recovered for him ; but he had not taken the same precaution 
my agent did, as the notes were so defaced by an oiled red stamp that 
he could not swear to the paper, and those that he thought had paid 
them to him denied that these notes were those they paid him. I have 
ordered no notes to be taken, tdl ^ome means are devised to prevent the 
gross imposition of paying for ;,old." 



m 



V* 

Hi 



PICTURE OF THE STATE OF IRELAND. 219 



aDd lie declared the whole manner of governing Ireland 
was founded on the " grossest corruption." 

On the 27th of April 1799, Lord Cornwallis wrote to 
the Bishop of Lichfield, giving a wretched picture of the 
state of Ireland. 

" This wretched country remains much in the same state,— the 
seeds of disaffection, of hatred of England, and in particular (and, 
I am sorry to say, in general with more reason) of their own land- 
lords, are as deeply rooted as ever, and frequently break out in 
various shapes, such as the murder of magistrates, or the hough- 
ing of ctttle : our politicians of the old leaven are as much occu- 
pied with their dirty jobs as ever. Those who think at all of the 
great question of the Union, confine their speculation to the 
simple question of its either promoting or counteracting their own 
private views, and the great mass of the people neither think or 
care about the matter. Under these circumstances, you will 
easily conceive how unpleasant my situation must be, and how little 
I can flatter myself with the hopes of obtaining any credit for 
myself, or of rendering any essential service to my country. 
Sincerely do I repent that I did not return to Bengal."" 

The interested parties were soon satisfied. A sum of 
£1,200,000 was expended in buying up the boroughs, and 
with the addition of a few peerages and pensions, the 



8 Cornwallis Correspondence, vol. 3, p. 93. | 

" My time has lately been much taken up with seeing, and breaking 
to the principal persons here, the projected Union, and when you send 
for a man on such business, he must stay with you and talk to you as 
long as he likes. I have no great doubts of being able to cany the 
measure here, but I have great apprehensions of the inefficacy of it after 
it is carried, and I do not think it would have been much more difficult 
to have included the Catholics. 

" Those who are called principal persons here, are men who have been 



a? 






1 



work was done. Lord Devonshire got £52,500, and Lord 
El)' £45,000. Three or four powerful families had the 
representation of Ireland completely in their power, either 
by the possession of large property, or by intermarriages. 
The Ponsoubys had no less than twenty-two seats under 
their complete control. The Devonshire and Beresford 
families had almost the same number. Lord Longueville 
ruled Cork and Mallow with six other places. 

The principal difficulty was with the Catholic clergy, 
who could not be bribed, but whom it was quite possible to 
deceive. The managers of the Union were not particular how 
the work was effected, with perhaps the exception of Lord 
Cornwallis, who had some idea of honour even where Papists 
were concerned. It is to be regretted that the Catholic 
Bishops, who worked for the Union, did not see some ol 
the private correspondence in which they were mentioned, 
and did not hear some of the private conversations which 
have been recorded, and sent down to posterity. 

Sir J. Hippisley, who was specially employed to cajole 

the Catholics, wrote to Lord Castlereagh : — 

" The Speaker told me, some time before, that Mr Pitt had 
much approved the suggestions I had offered, with respect to the 



w 



raised into consequence, only by having the entire disposal of the pat- 
ronage of the Crown in return for their undertaking the management 
of the country, because the Lords-Lieutenant were too idle or too in- 
capable to management it themselves. They are detested by everybody 
but their immediate followers, and have no influence but what is founded 
on the grossest corruption." — CurnvxtUis 1 Currtfjioudence, vol. '3, p. 445. 




distinctions and checks on the Monastic Clergy. Your Lordship 
will permit me to quote a vulgar Italian proverb, which is this: — 
''One must be aware of a bull before, of an ass at his heels, and of 
a friar on all sides." Seven years' experience on Catholic ground 
convinced me that this adage was well imagined." 

On the 5th of June 1799, the Earl of Altamont wrote 
from Westport House — " The priests have all appeared to 
sign, and though I am not proud of many of them as asso- 
ciates, I will take their signatures to prevent a possibility 
of a counter declaration." 9 

On the 3rd of June 1799, Lord Castlereagh wrote to 

9 " If the Roman Catholics stand forward, it will be unwillingly; they 
are keeping back decidedly, but many will be influenced, and some few 
who connected themselves with the Protestants during the disturbance 
will be zealously forward on the present occasion. The priests have all 
offered to sign ; and, though I am not proud of many of them as asso- 
ciates, I will take their signatures, to prevent a possibility of a counter- 
declaration. I hear the titular Archbishop has expressed himself inclined 
to the measure This day, I have sent round to all the Catholics of 
property in the country : I may be mistaken, but, in my judgment, the 
wish of the most of them woidd be to stand neuter ; or, perhaps, if they 
had any countenance, to oppose it — that is the fact. Several will sign 
from influence, some from fear ; but the majority, I believe, will pretend 
that they have given opinions already, and can't decently retract them. 
You shall know exactly when I get to Dublin. Every man applied to, 
of all persuasions, wants to make it personal compliment." — Memoir of 
Viscount Castlereagh, vol. ii. p. 328. 

Mr Cook wrote to Lord Castlereagh at the close of 1798 to inform 
him of public opinion in Dublin : — 

" The Dublin argument is this: — Absenteeism will increase — interest 
of the debt to England will increase — and we cannot bear the drain. Our 
manufactures will be ruined by putting an end to duties between the 
two countries. All the proprietors in Dublin must be injured. We 
shall be liable to British debts," &c. 



222 THE CLERGY AND THE UNION. 

the Duke of Portland that the rebellion " was managed by 
the inferior priests." There were certainly some of the 
Catholic clergy who united witb the rebels in self-defence, 
but a careful examination of the correspondence of the 
times will show at once that they were few in number, and 
that the Government relied nmch on the co-operation of the 
priests, even at the very time that many of them were being 
treated with inhuman cruelty. 

On the 20th of July 1799, Lord Cornwall is wrote to 
the Duke of Portland, that the " clergy of the Church, par- 
ticularly the superior, countenance the measure," and that 
the linen merchants of the north were much too busy with 
their trade to think much on the subject, 1 If the Catholic 



1 These letters are so important an illustration of the state of Ireland 
at this period that we give further extracts/ — 

" Within these few days, the Catholics have shown a disposition to 
depart from their line of neutrality, and to support the measure. Those 
of the city of Waterford have sent up a very strong declaration in 
favour of Union, at the same time expressing a hope that it will lead 
to the accomplishment of their emancipation, as they term it, but not 
looking to it as a preliminary. The Catholics of Kilkenny have agreed 
tu a similar declaration ; and, as the clergy of that Church, particularly 
the superiors, countenance the measure, it is likely to extend itself. 

" In the North, the public opinion'is much divided on the question. 
In Derry and Donegal, the gentry are in general well-disposed. The 
linen merchants are too busily employed in their trade to think much 
on the subject, or to take an active part on either side ; but I under- 
stand they are, on the whole, rather favourable, wishing to have their 
trade secured, which they do not feel, notwithstanding the Speaker's 
argument, to be independent of Great Britain." — Memoirs of Viscmwi 
Ca&ilereagh, vol ii. p. 351. 



"T^y • #$ 



AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL PRACTICE. 



south had been allowed to trade as well as the Protestant 
north, and permitted the same liberty of conscience, Eng- 
land might have saved herself some millions of money. 

There was some difficulty in Tipperary, and Lord Castle- 
reagh wrote to the Duke of Portland complaining that the 
country members had voted against the Government, which 
he declared to be a "a very unconstitutional practice," 
and but too prevalent in Ireland. Thus, while the tenant 
was compelled to vote as his landlord pleased, his repre- 
sentative was to vote as the Government pleased. This, 
of course, was only in the Irish Parliament, where tenants 
and members should alike be deeply grateful for the pri- 
vilege of being allowed to vote at all, and were bound, 
according to English views of Irish constitutional liberty, 
to vote as their masters ordered them. Certainly, under 
the circumstances, it ought not to have been so difficult to 
carry the Union. Neither wuld it have been difficult, 
had not a number of the members discovered that' a good 
deal of capita] could be made of their votes. 8 

One of the most remarkable and able letters of the whole 






5 Lord de Clifford wrote an elaborate letter to Mr Townsend, 23d 
July 1799, in which he puts forward very strong objections to the 
Union, manifestly for the purpose of enhancing his price. ' With a can- 
dour almost too transparent for laughter, he concludes by saying that, 
if he believed the measure for the public good, he would sacrifice his 
boroughs; but as he does not, he cannot be unmindful of his private 
interests. One can scarcely believe it possible that any educated man 
could coolly write his own shame so openly. 



aeries was written by Mr Luke Fox, afterwards a judge of 
Common Pleas, to Lord Castlereagh. He grasped the 
whole subject with resolute precision. 3 The population of 
Ireland, he estimated at more than five millions five hun- 
dred thousand. Of these only 500,000 were Protestants. 
This population was again divided into three classes, who 
" composed three distinct nations, as different in character 
and principles and habits of life as the antipodes." 

" The object is to form them into one united people under the 



3 The following extracts from his letter will prove that he did this : — 

" With regard to the measure itself, supposing the nation, or even the 
Parliament, should be induced to adopt it, I much fear that the great 
number of absentees which would immediately follow its being carried 
into execution would be much more likely to occasion the rebellion's 
breaking out afresh, than it would tend to restoring peace and quietness, 
even were the majority of the well-affected in favour of it. It is a 
well-known fact to those that are at all acquainted with the interior of 
Ireland, that a very great majority of the people look upon the proprie- 
tors of the land of the country as a set of usurpers, and have been ready 
(time immemorial) to rise and wrest their property from them on the 
first opportunity. I am perfectly convinced that we owe the salvation 
of the country during the late rebellion (which, by the by, I fear is not 
suppressed, but barely smothered) more to the personal exertions of the 
country gentlemen in devoting their whole time, their lives, and their 
properties, to keeping their tenantry and neighbours in order, than we 
do to the great military force that was brought into the kingdom. If, 
by forcing a Union upon this country, you disgust one-half of these 
gentlemen and convert the other half into absentees, you will leave the 
country a prey to the machinations of the disaffected, and the conse- 
quence I fear would be fatal." 

He then alludes to the Scotch Union, and says Scotland would have 
improved just as fast if left independent : — 

" The very reverse appears to me to be the best policy for Ireland. 




rule of the British constitution, and to unite, by sentiment and 
interest, that people to Great Britain. Our fleets may display 
their triumphant flags in every quarter of the globe ; our troops 
may conquer, but barren are their laurels and futile their 
triumphs, when compared to the advantages likely to result to 
Great Britain and Ireland from this measure in a military, com- 
mercial, and financial point of view. Bui, to proceed to delineate 
the mode— it is material to observe how these three distinct 
bodies, the Protestants, the Presbyterians, and the Catholics, 
stand affected to the question of Union. 

" The Protestants, composing about 50,000 souls, the descend- 
ants of English colonists, possess the whole power and patronage, 
and almost the whole landed property of the country. 

" They are, of course, political monopolists, and can only be 
gained by influence. 

" The Catholics, composing the mass of the population, amount- 
in- at least to three millions— four would have been more correct — 
of souls, descendants of the original inhabitants, or of colonists 
who degenerated, and, in the language of the historian, not very 



The landed interest you have already attached to you, both from prin- 
ciple ami interest. The great body of the people are against you, and 
I should therefore think that, instead of holding out inducements to 
them to leave it, you ought rather to give them every encouragement to 
reside upon their estates, and guard the mutual interests and connection 
of the two kingdoms, where they have most power to do it with effect. 

" Lord Castlereagh informs me that 'it is intended that the ((unities 
should return two members, as at present ; that the populous cities and 
towns should return one member each, and the rest of the boroughs be 
classed as in Scotland, making a proportionate compensation t.» the 
proprietors.' Though I solemnly declare I would not hesitate a mo- 
ment sacrificing my borough interest if I was convinced the measure 
was for the public good, I cannot be expected (entertaining the doubts 
that I do respecting it), to be wholly unmindful of my private interests, 
and i should wish much 10 know in what light my boroughs would be 
looked upon according to this plan." 




classical but strong, became Hibernicis ipsis Hiherniores, are, for the 
most part, poor, uneducated, and ignorant, deriving weight almost 
solely from their numbers, added to a natural vigour of body and 
astuteness of mind, capable, under a proper regimen, of being 
modelled to the most beneficial ends, both civil and military. 
They are at present in the lowest state of political depression, in 
a semi-barbarous state (as has been truly observed), and thereby 
eminently qualified to answer the continual drains on a great 
C( immercial empire to supply her fleets and armies in every acces- 
sible quarter of the globe. These are to be gained by concession. 
" The Protestants are, from every motive of a monopolising 
interest, determined opponents to the scheme of Union, by which 
they must lose that monopoly of power and profit, which it is not 
in human nature voluntarily to resign when once possessed. 
Does any man think that Mr Foster and Mr Ponsonby are actu- 
ated by such motives 1 Religion is a mere pretence — the true 
bone of contention is the monopoly of Irish power and 
patronage." 

Never was a truer word said. Not only did these mono- 
polists sell " power and patronage," but they actually made 
every effort to depress Irish industry, because, if the Irish 
once began to be an independent nation, their gain was 



'T J S 



Such was the state of public affairs when O'Connell made 
his first speech. The bar were nearly all against the Union, 

4 Tin- Beresford family were amongst the most rapacious and unscru- 
pulous of this class. Lord Auckland wrote to Mr "Beresford, that Eng- 
land " ought to check that system of liberality ami fostering protection 
which tended to increase Irish capital and prosperity, and give ex- 
tended means of mischief." So that all that has been done to ruin 
Ireland was not considered sufficient by those men who wished to build 
their fortunes on her misery. 



THE BAR AXD THE UNION. 



and even Mr Saurin, who was the father of the bar, and a 

conscientious hater of Catholics, was warmly opposed to it. 

The bar held their first meeting on the 9th of December 

1798. Mr Saurin had been elected some years before to 

the command of the Lawyers' Volunteer Corps, and now 

issued the following order: — 

" Lawyers' Infantry.— The corps is ordered to parade at 
twelve at noon at the new court in the new regimentals. A 
punctual attendance is requested, as business of the utmost im- 
portance is to be transacted. 

" (Signed) Stewart King, Adjutant." 

The majority of the bar, 5 however, suggested that a dis- 
cussion in an armed assembly was unsuitable, and the 
result was a meeting as civilians. At this meeting Mr 
Saurin moved — 

."That the measure of a legislative union of Great Britain, 
is an innovation which it would be highly dangerous and im- 
proper to propose at the present juncture of affairs in this 
country." 

Mr Plunket said — 

" Should the administration propose that measure now, it will 
be carried. For animosity and want of time to consider coolly its 



6 Lord Cornwallis wrote to the Duke of Portland : — " The bar have 
been most forward in their opposition, and have been this day assembled 
as a corps, it is understood, with an intention of taking up the question. 
Should that learned body be so intemperate as to set an example to the 
yei imanry at large, unconstitutional in the extreme, and dangerous to the 
public safety, I shall feel myself called on, in the outset, to meet this 
attempt to overawe the King's Government and the legislature with 
decision." — Cormcallii? Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 5. 



consequences, and forty thousand British troops in Ireland, will 
carry the measure. But in a little time the people will awaken as 
from a dream, and what consequences will follow 1 tremble to 
think. For myself, I declare that I oppose a union principally be- 
cause I am convinced that it will accelerate a total separation of 
the two countries." 

The determined conduct of the bar was certainly annoy- 
ing to the Government, and on the 15th December Lord 
Cornwallis wrote to the Duke of Portland : — 

[" Secret and confidential."] 

" Dublin Castle, Dec. 15, 1798. 

" My Lord, — Your Grace will probably have seen in the papers 
an account of the violence which disgraced the meeting of the 
barristers, and of the miserable figure which the friends of Union 
made on a division of 32 against 162. 

" The bankers and merchants are to meet on Tuesday next, and 
I do not expect a more favourable division on that occasion. In 
point of indecency of manners and language, they cannot surpass 
the gentlemen of the learned profession. 

" Our reports of the reception of the measure in the North are 
not favourable, especially about Belfast, and the principal Catho- 
lics about Dublin begin to hold a much less sanguine language 
about the probable conduct of their brethren, and are disposed to 
think that, in this part of the kingdom at least, the greater number 
of them will join in the opposition to the Union." 

In a confidential and friendly letter to Major-General 

Ross, he said — 

" The opposition to the Union increases daily in and about 
Dublin, and I am afraid, from conversations which I have held 
with persons much connected with them, that I was too sanguine 
when I hoped for the good inclinations of the Catholics. Their 
disposition is so completely alienated from the British Govern- 




merit, that I believe they would even be tempted to join with 
their bitterest enemies, the Protestants of Ireland, if they thought 
that measure would lead to a total separation of the two countries. 
My thoughts may be more gloomy, as a black north east wind is 
Wowing with great violence, and darkening the hemisphere ; but 
I think, from the folly, obstinacy, and gnss corruption which per- 
vade every corner of this island, that it is impossible that it can 
be saved from destruction. I tremble likewise for the spirit of 
enterprise which prevails on your side of the water, without troops, 
and in defiance of the seasons.'"' 

On the 27th of December 1798, the first number of the 
Anti-Union newspaper was published. Plunket, Grattan, 
and Burke were the chief contributors ; they were the men 
of the day. How little did any one anticipate that the young 
barrister, whose maiden speech is recorded in one of its 
earliest numbers, would at a future time wield a power, and 
possess an influence far superior to theirs — that this youth 
would obtain the justice so long asked for by Catholics, and 
which was denied even to their eloquence and patriotism. 

Jhese meetings were carefully watched, and Major Sirr, 
but too well known for undertaking any mean office re- 
quired by Government, clattered into the Royal Exchange 
Hall when Mr Moore had taken the chair, and O'Connell 

6 The fact seems to be that the Government either deceived themselves 
or were thoroughly deceived about the Irish Catholics. The latter sug- 
gestion seems to he the more correct, though the deceit was the result of 
their opposition and not of guile. The upper classes of Catholics took on 
themselves to he spokesmen for the rest. They expected emancipation, 
and believed the promises of Government. The middle classes were by 
no means so sanguine, and judged far more correctly. 



m 



m 

Si;-'-', 






f 



was preparing to speak. He had a look at the resolutions, 
which were drawn up by O'Connell himself, probably his 
first effort in that direction, but he could not find anything 
in them to condemn. He dashed out as he had dashed in, 
and O'Connell spoke : — 

" Counsellor O'Connell rose, and in a short speech prefaced the 
resolutions. He said that the question of Union was confessedly 
one of the first importance and magnitude. Sunk, indeed, in 
more than criminal apathy, must that Irishman be, who could feel 
indifference on the subject. It was a measure, to the considera- 
tion of which we were called by every illumination of the under- 
standing, and every feeling of the heart. There was, therefore, 
no necessity to apologise for the introducing the discussion of the 
question amongst Irishmen. But before he brought forward any 
resolution, he craved permission to make a few observations on 
the causes which produced the necessity of meeting as Catholics 
— as a separate and distinct body. In doing so, he thought he 
would clearly show that they were justifiable in at length deviat- 
ing from a resolution which they had heretofore formed. The 
enlightened mind of the Catholics had taught them the impolicy, 
the illiberality, and the injustice of separating themselves on any 
occasion from the rest of the people of Ireland. The Catholics 
had therefore resolved, and they had wisely resolved, never more 
tu appear before the public as a distinct and separate body ; but 
they did not — they could not— then foresee the unfortunately 
existing circumstances of this moment. They could not then f< iresee 
that they would be reduced to the necessity, either of submitting 
to the disgraceful imputation of approving of a measure, as de- 
testable to them as it was ruinous to their country, or once again, 
ami he trusted for the last time, of coming forward as a distinct 
body 

'■ There was no man present but was acquainted with the 
industry with which it was circulated, that the Catholics were 



APPROBATION. 



231 



m 



favourable to the Union. In vain did multitudes of that body, 
in different capacities, express their disapprobation of the mea- 
sure ; in vain did they concur with others of their fellow-subjects 
in expressing their abhorrence of it — as freemen or freeholders, 
electors of counties or inhabitants of cities — still the calumny 
was repeated; it was printed in journal after journal; it was 
published in pamphlet after pamphlet . it was circulated with 
activity in private companies; it was boldly and loudly proclaimed 
in public assemblies. How this clamour was raised, and how it 
was supported, was manifest; the motives of it were apparent. 

" In vain had the Catholics (individually) endeavoured to resist 
the torrent. Their future efforts, as individuals, would be equally 
vain and fruitless : they must then oppose it collectively. 

" There was another reason why they should come forward as 
a distinct class — a reason which he confessed had made the 
greatest impression upon his feelings. Not content with falsely 
asserting that the Catholics favoured the extinction of Ireland, 
this, their supposed inclination, was attributed to the foulest 
motives — motives which were most repugnant to their judgments, 
and most abhorrent to their hearts; it was said that the Catholics 
were ready to sell their country for a price, or what was still more 
depraved, to abandon it on account of the unfortunate animosities 
which the wretched temper of the times had produced; — can they 
remain silent under so horrible a calumny ? This calumny was 
flung on the whole body ; it was incumbent on the whole body to 
come forward and contradict it. Yes, they will show every friend 
of Ireland that the Catholics are incapable of selling their 
country ; they will loudly declare that if their emancipation was 
offered for their consent to the measure, even were emancipation 
after the Union a benefit, they would reject it with prompt indig- 
nation. (This sentiment met with approbation.) Let us," said he, 
" show to Ireland that we have nothing in view but her good, 
nothing in our hearts but the desire of mutual forgiveness, mutual 
toleration, and mutual affection; in fine, let every man who feels 



with me proclaim, that if the alternative were offered him of 
Union, or the re-enactment of the Penal Code in all its pristine 
horrors, that he would prefer without hesitation the latter, as the 
lesser and more sufferable evil ; that he would rather confide in 
the justice of his- brethren the Protestants of Ireland, who have 
already liberated him, than lay his country at the feet of foreigners. 
(This sentiment met with much and marked approbation.) With 
regard to the Union, so much had been said — so much had been 
written — on the subject, that it was impossible that any man 
should not before now have formed an opinion on it. He would 
not trespass on their attention in repeating arguments which they 
had already heard, and topics which they had already considered. 
But if there was any man present who could be so far mentally 
degraded as to consent to the extinction of the liberty, the constitu- 
tion, and even the name of Ireland, he would call on him not to 
leave the direction and management of his commerce and pro- 
perty to strangers, over whom he could have no control." 

The following resolutions were then proposed and passed 
unanimously : — 

" Royal Exchange, Dcblin, January \Zth, 1800. 

"At a numerous and respectable meeting of the Roman Catho- 
lics of the city of Dublin, convened pursuant to public notice, 
Ambrose Moore, Esq., in the chair — 

" Resolved — ' That we are of opinion that the proposed incor- 
porate union of the legislature of Great Britain and Ireland is, in 
fact, an extinction of the liberty of this country, which would be 
reduced to the abject condition of a province, surrendered to the 
mercy of the minister and legislature of another country, to be 
bound by their absolute will, and taxed at their pleasure by laws, 
in tin- making of which this country would have no efficient par- 
ticipation whatsoever.' 

■■ Resolved — ' That we are of opinion that the improvement of 
Ireland for the last twetltj years, so rapid beyond example, is to 



be ascribed wholly to the independency of our legislature, so 
gloriously asserted in the year 1782, by virtue of our Parliament 
co-operating with the generous recommendation of our most 
gracious and benevolent sovereign, and backed by the spirit of 
our people, and so solemnly ratified by both kingdoms as the only 
true and permanent foundation of Irish prosperity and British 
connection.' 

" Resolved — ' That we are of opinion, that if that independency 
should ever be surrendered, we must as rapidly relapse into our 
former depression and misery ; and that Ireland must inevitably 
lose, with her liberty, all that she has acquired in wealth, and 
industry, and civilisation.' 

" Resolved — ' That we are firmly convinced, that the supposed 
advantages of such a surrender are unreal and delusive, and can 
never arise in fact ; and that even if they should arise, they would 
be only the bounty of the master to the slave, held by his cour- 
tesy, and resumable at his pleasure.' 

" Resolved — ' That, having heretofore determined not to come 
forward any more in the distinct character of Catholics, but to 
consider our claims and our cause not as those of a sect, but as 
involved in the general fate of our country — we now think it right, 
notwithstanding such determination, to publish the present reso- 
lutions, in order to undeceive our fellow-subjects who may have 
been led to believe, by a false representation, that we are capable of 
giving any concurrence whatsoever to so foul and fatal a project; 
to assure them we are incapable of sacrificing our common coun- 
try to either pique or pretension ; and that we are of opinion, 
that this deadly attack upon the nation is the great call of nature, 
of country, and posterity upon Irishmen of all descriptions and 
persuasions, to every constitutional and legal resistance ; and 
that we sacredly pledge ourselves to persevere in obedience to 
that call as long as we have life.' 

" Signed, by order, James Ryan, Sec." 

How little O'Connell could have anticipated his future 



LIBERALITY BEYOND TEE AGE. 




when he expressed so ardent a hope that this occasion 
might be the last, as well as the first, on which Catholics 
should come forward publicly as a body ! Haw little he 
anticipated the thousand times on which his thrilling 
words should arouse the slumbering soul of the Irish celt, 
and animate him to new efforts for his religion and his 
nationality ! How little he anticipated that his voice 
should one day rouse British statesmen to consider the 
past and present wrongs of Ireland, and obtain from the 
manly justice of the noble-minded amongst them, or from 
the cringing fear of the base, the rights which had been 
so long asked and so long denied. 

With a liberality beyond the age, he declared himself 
ready to confide in the justice of Irish Protestants rather 
than in the doubtful mercies of English rulers. 

It would be well, indeed, that those who accuse O'Con- 
nell of exceptional bitterness in his way of speaking when 
English rule was in question, should remember his early 
life — should remember that he witnessed all the horrors of 
the rebellion, that he had personal experience of all the 
treachery of Government. 7 He was precisely at the age 

7 An important instance of how the memory or tradition of past 

m ixeites men to seize the first opportunity of revenge, if not of 

redress, has occurred in our own times. It is a circumstance which 
should be very carefully pondered by statesmen who have the real 
interest of the whole nation at heart. It is a circumstance, as a sample 
of many other similar cases, which should be known to every English- 
man who wishes to understand the cause of "Irish disturbances." " One 



<"rA, 



* , -^;^ £ V5!>c i w 



BITTER MEMORIES. 



when such impressions would be taken most vividly — 
would be stereotyped upon the memory most indelibly. 
If he spoke at times in rude language, and told plain 
truths in the plainest words, it was bacause he had wit- 



of the men who was shot by the police during the late Fenian outbreak 
in Ireland, was a respectable farmer named Peter Crowley. His history 
tells the motive for which he risked and lost his life. His grandfather 
had been outlawed in the rebellion of '98. His uncle, Father Peter 
O'Neill, had been imprisoned and flo<j<jed most barharously with circum- 
stances of peculiar cruelty, in Cork, in the year 1798. The memory of 
the insult and injury done to a priest, who was entirely guiltless of the 
crimes with which he was charged, left a legacy of bitterness and hatred 
of Saxon rule in the whole family, which, unhappily, religion failed to 
eradicate. Peter Crowley was a sober, industrious, steady man, and his 
parish priest, who attended his deathbed, pronounced his end ' most 
happy and edifying.' Three clergymen and a procession of young men, 
women, and children, scattering flowers before the coffin, and bearing 
green boughs, attended bis remains to the grave. He was mourned as 
a patriot, who had loved his country, not wisely, but too well ; and it 
■was believed that his motive for joining the Fenian ranks was less from 
a desire of revenge, which would have been sinful, than from a mis- 
taken idea of freeing his country from a repetition of the cruelties of 
'98, and from her present grievances." 

Arthur Young had, several years previously, made the following 
sensible observations on the probable effects of the Union : — 

"In conversation upon the subject of a Union with Great Britain, I 
was informed that nothing was so unpopular in Ireland as such an idea, 
and that the great objection to*it was increasing the number of absen- 
tees. When it was in agitation, twenty peers and sixty commoners 
were talked of to sit in the British Parliament, which would be the 
residence of eighty of the best estates in England. Going every year to 
England would by degrees make them residents ; they would educate 
their children there, and in time would become mere absentees ; be- 
coming 60, they would be unpopular : and others would be elected who, 
treading in the same steps, would yield the places still t'i others." 



nessed cruel deeds, for which no apology was or could 
be made. 

O'Connell's personal appearance at this time has been 
described somewhat invidiously by Sir Jonah Barrington, 
but the likeness given of him at the head of the following 
chapter shows that his appearance must have been singu- 
larly pleasing. 

The bright, kindly, blue eyes flashed with intelligence 
and that dash of humour which seems inherent to the 
Irish character. His action was gentle, but sufficiently 
marked. His form was strong and muscular, but devoid 
of that portliness which gave dignity to his later years. 
The features were clearly cut and tolerably regular. It was 
not a handsome face, but it was a kindly one, and scarcely 
told all the power of mind that lay hidden within. 

However he may have disliked Pitt as a politician, he 
admired him as an elocutionist. Already O'Connell had 
so far anticipated his future career, as to take special pains 
witli his address in public, but only with a view to success 
at the bar. He did not, he could not, have anticipated 
bow his voice would roll thunder tones at historic Clontarf 
and Muldaghmast. 

O'Connell spoke thus of Grattan to Mr Daunt :^ 

" Pitt," he said, " had a grand majestic march of language, and 
a full melodious voice. Grattan's eloquence was full of fire, but 
had not the. melody or dignity of Pitt's ; yet nobody quoted Pitt's 
sayings, whereas, Grattan was always saying things that every- 
body quoted and remembered. ' I did not,' " said Mr O'Connell, 




" ' hear Grattan make any of his famous speeches ; but I have 
heard him in public. He had great power, and great oddity — he 
almost swept the ground with his odd action.' 

" His conversation contained much humour of a dry antithetical 
kind ; and he never relaxed a muscle, whilst his hearers were con- 
vulsed with laughter. He abounded with anecdotes of the men 
with whom he politically acted, and told them very well. I met 
him at dinner at the house of an uncle of O'Conor Don, and the 
conversation turned on Lord Kingsborough, grandfather to the 
present Earl of Kingston, a very strange being, who married at 
sixteen a cousin of his own, aged fifteen — used to dress like a 
roundhead of Cromwell's time, kept his hair close shorn, and 
wore a plain coat without a collar. Grattan said of this oddity, 
' He was the strangest compound of incongruities I ever knew ; 
he combined the greatest personal independence with the most 
crouching political servility to ministers ; he was the most religi- 
ous man, and the most profligate ; he systematically read every 
day a portion of the Bible, and marked his place in the sacred 
volume with an obscene ballad.' 

" ' I dare say,' said Mr O'Connell, after a pause, ' that Grattan 
told O'Conor to ask me to dinner. I was then beginning to be 
talked of, and people like to see a young person who acquires 
notoriety.' " 

O'Connell had a very high opinion of Grattan's son. 
One day, in pointing him out to an English friend, he 
6aid — 

" That is Henry Grattan, son of the great Irish patriot. He 
inherits all his father's devotion to Ireland. If you presented a 
pistol at his head, and if he were persuaded his own immediate 
death would secure the Repeal of the Union, he would say, ' In 
the name of heaven, fire away ! ' " 

The speech was certainly characteristic of the man who 

made it. 



->* 



m 
BBS 



i 



238 



REMINISCENCE OF PITT AND FOX. 



Speaking of Pitt, O'Connell observed — 

" He struck me as having the most majestic flow of language 
ami the finest voice imaginable. He managed his voice admir- 
ably. It was from him I learned to throw out the lower tones 
at the close of my sentences. Most men either let their voice 
fall at the end of their sentences, or else force it into a shout or 
screech. This is because they end with the upper instead of the 
lower notes. Pitt knew better. He threw his voice so completely 
round the House, that every syllable he uttered was distinctly 
heard by every man in the House." 

Mr Daunt inquired if be bad heard Fox in the same 
debate. He replied — 

" Yes, and he spoke delightfully ; his speech was better than 
Pitt's. The forte of Pitt as an orator was majestic declamation, 
and an inimitable felicity of praise. The word he used was 
always the very best word that could be got to express his idea. 
The only man I ever knew who approached Pitt in this particular 
excellence, was Charles Kendal Bushe, whose phrases were always 
admirably happy." 8 

O'Connell expressed himself very strongly on the subject 

of the Union in the Report of the Repeal Association, April 

8 O'Connell had a great dislike to being shown as a " lion" at public 
private dinners. On such occasions he rarely spoke. Mr Daunt 
says — " I was once at a dinner party in Dublin, when our host proposed 
O'Connell's health in a complimentary speech, which he ended by say- 
ing that he abstained from wanner eulogy through fear of wounding the 
modesty of his distinguished guest. O'Connell rose to return thanks, 
ami commenced his speech by saying : — 'My friend lias alluded to my 
modesty. Whatever my original amount of that quality may have been, 
I certainly have never worn any of it out by too frequent use ; so that 
I have the whole original stock quite ready for service on the present 
occasion. ' " 



1840. This record of his impressions after the lapse of 
forty years is valuahle and important : — 

" The second means for carrying the Union were — ' the depri- 
vation of all legal protection to liberty or life — the familiar use of 
torture — the trials by courts-martial — the forcible suppression of 
public meetings — the total stifling of public opinion — and the use 
of armed violence.' 

" All the time the Union was under discussion, the Habeas 
Corpus Act was suspended — no man could call one hour's 
liberty his own. 

" All the time the Union was under discussion, COURTS-MARTIAL 
had power unlimited over life and limb. Bound by no definite 
form or charge, nor by any rule of evidence, the courts-martial 
threatened with death those who should dare to resist the spoli- 
ation of their birthrights. 

" There was no redress for the most cruel and tyrannical im- 
prisonment. The persons of the king's Irish subjects were at the 
caprice of the king's ministers. The lives of the king's Irish subjects 
were at the sport and whim of the boys, young and old, of the motley 
corps of English militia, JJ'dsh mountaineers, Scotch fencibles, and 
Irish yeomanry. At such a moment as that, when the gaols were 
crammed with unaccused victims, and the scaffolds were reeking with 
the blood of untried wretches — at such a moment as that, was it, 
that the British minister committed this act of spoliation and 
ROBBERY, which enriched England but little, and made Ireland 
poor indeed. 

" Besides the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and the 
consequent insecurity to personal liberty — besides the existence of 
courts-martial, and the consequent insecurity of human life ; be- 
sides all these, actual force was used — meetings of counties, duly 
convened to deliberate on the measure, were dispersed by military 
force. It was not at Maryborough or Clonmel alone that the 
military were called out — horse, foot, and artillery — to scatter, and 
they did scatter, meetings convened by the legal authorities to 



O'COXXELL IX PERSOXAL DAXGER. 



expostulate, to petition against the Union. Force was a peculiar 
instrument to suppress all constitutional opposition. 

" Why should we dwell longer on this part of the subject, when 
in a single paragraph we have, in eloquent language, a masterly 
description, which easily supersedes any attempt of ours ? Here 
are the words of Plunket — ' I will be bold to say, that licentious 
and impious France, in all the unrestrained excesses that anarchy 
and atheism have given birth to, has not committed a more insi- 
dious act against her enemy, than is now attempted by the pro- 
fessed champion of civilised Europe against Ireland — a friend and 
ally — in the hour of her calamity and distress. At a moment 
when our country is filled with British troops— whilst the Habeas 
Corpus Act is suspended — whilst trials by courts-martial are carry, 
ing on in many parts of the kingdom — while the people are made 
to believe that they have no right to meet and deliberate, and 
whilst the people are palsied by their fears — at the moment when 
we are distracted by internal dissensions, dissensions kept alive 
as the pretext of our present subjugation, and the instrument of 
our future thraldom, — such is the time in which the Union is 
proposed.' " 

O'Connell was in great personal danger at this period 
on more than one occasion. While doing duty in the 
Volunteer corps, he was posted as a sentry near one of the 
canal bridges, and was ordered by his officer to fire on some 
unarmed country people who were passing at the other side 
of the canal after the hour at which martial law permitted 
persons to be about. He positively refused to perform this 
act of wanton cruelty, and in consequence was in danger of 
being himself the victim. On another occasion he was one 
of a party who had orders to search a hotel in James's 
Street, for suspected parties who were thought to have 





CHIVALROUS CONDUCT. 



arrived there by the canal boat ; he had singly to oppose 
the wanton and licentious violence of his comrades, who 
sought to drag an inoffensive stranger and his wife from 
their beds. His son observes : — 

" His experience in these sad times has left an indelible im- 
pression upon him of the danger of entrusting civilians with 
arms ; the tendency, in his own words, that a man has, ' when he 
lias arms in his hands, to be a ruffian,' being uncontrolled by that 
custom of bearing them under strict restraints and practices of 
long discipline, which makes the soldier patient and forbearing. 
The ' lawyers' infantry ' were, of course, composed of gentlemen. 
The education for the arduous profession of the bar should, one 
would have thought, have tended to refine the mind, and teach 
restraint over the brute impulses ; and yet, among some, there 
was a spirit of licence and outrage prevailing, that the most reck- 
less and disordered soldiery could scarcely equal." 

He was in danger again in trying to save the life of a 
defenceless man from a member of the attorneys' corps, who 
was trying to cut him down simply because he was alone and 
helpless. O'Connell received the sword cut on the barrel 
of his musket, and the deep indentation which it made 
proved how fatal the blow would have been if it had been 
received by the person for whom it was intended. 

Mr Wagget, afterwards Recorder of Cork, was O'Con- 
nell's sergeant, and, happily for him, happened to come up 
at the moment. A few words explained matters, and he 
at once took O'Connell's part, but he only got rid of the 
attorney by charging him with his halbert. 

The Union passed, and the Catholics were not emanci- 

Q 






pated. The state of the country was alarming. The har- 
vest had failed in the autumn of 1 799, yet Mr Pitt would 
not allow any corn to he exported to Ireland, until Lord 
Cornwallis had made the most urgent representations on 
the subject. He wrote to Major-General Ross, stating, 
" that every Catholic of influence was in danger." On the 
22d November 1799, he wrote to the Duke of Portland — 

" I most earnestly hope that your Grace and His Majesty's 
other confidential servants will see this matter in the same light 
with me, and that you will allow the Roman Catholic peers to 
vote for the representatives of the peerage, on their taking the 
same oaths that are required from the electors of their communion 
when they give their votes for members of the House of Commons. 
I have had a most difficult line to pursue, but amidst the violence 
of factions and religious prejudices, I have gone steadily to my 
point, and I think I may now venture to say that 1 have, in a 
great measure, gained the confidence and good-will of the Catho- 
lics without losing the Protestants. But if the former see cause 
to believe that 1 am disposed to adopt the ancient system, or that 
I am a man of straw, without weight or consideration, things will 
soon revert to their former course, and I shall, perhaps, be the 
most improper man to hold my present station." 

On the 28th November, Lord Castlereagh wrote to the 

Duke of Portland — 

" Your Grace and Mr Pitt will, I trust, both have an oppor- 
tunity of satisfying Lord Clare's feelings in respect to the line 
hereafter to be pursued towards the Catholics before he leaves 
London. Of course, no further hopes will be held forth to that 
body by the Irish Government without specific directions from your 
Grace, and I fairly confess I entertain very great doubts whether 
any more distinct explanation than has already been given would 



MI SIS TERIA L D UP LICIT Y. 



at present be politically advantageous ; it is enough to feel assured 
that we are not suffering them to form expectations which must 
afterwards be disappointed, under the disadvantage of having 
dexterity, if not duplicity, imputed to Government in the con- 
duct of the measure." 

No " further hopes" were held out because the work was 
done; but, undoubtedly, both "dexterity" and "dupli- 
city" were attributed with every reason to the English 
Government. Ministers were perfectly well aware that they 
had acted with " duplicity," but they found a convenient 
excuse — the king, they said, would not hear of emancipa- 
tion. This was quite true ; but the king was honest as well 
as obstructive, and at least spoke out, and declared that he 
had not been a party to the promise. 8 



*" The King to the Right Hon. Henry Ddndas. 

" "Windsor, February 1th, 1801. 
" I cannot but regret that on the late unhappy occasion I had not 
been treated with more confidence previous to forming an opinion, 
which, to my greatest surprise, I learnt on Thursday from Earl Spencer, 
has been in agitation ever since Lord Castlereagh came over in August, 
yet of which I never had the smallest suspicion till within these very 
weeks ; but so desirous was I to avoid the present conclusion, that, 
except what passed with Earl Spencer and Lord Grenville, about three 
weeks past, and a hint I gave to Mr Secretary Dundas on Wednesday 
scvennight, I have been silent on the subject, and, indeed, hoping that 
Mr Pitt had not pledged himself on what I cannot with my sentiments 
of religious and political duty think myself at liberty to concur. . Mr 
Secretary Dundas has known my opinions when he corresponded wit h 
the Earl of Westmoreland, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and at 
least will do me the justice to recollect that both then, and when after- 
wards brought forward by the Earl Fitzwilliam, my language perfectly 
coincided with my present conduct. Geokge It." 



C *■-* 



SYSTEMATIC DECEPTION. 



Lord Castlereagh wrote a " most private " letter to the 
Right Honourable William Pitt, on the 1st of January 
1801, in which he puts the whole state of the case into the 
plainest possible language, in which he showed how abso- 
lutely necessary the assistance of the Catholic body was in 
order to carry the Union, and how he had been ordered to dram 
the Catholics on. The object was gained, and if there 
was not another document in existence besides this letter 
to show how shamefully the Catholics were duped, it would 
be more than sufficient. 

At last, and with considerable difficulty, the upper class 
of Catholics were made to understand how they had been 
treated. It might have been supposed that they had 
learned a life-long lesson, but there are persons on whom 
experience is wasted. 

Mr Pitt tried to save his character by resigning, being 
fully aware that he would be at once recalled to office, 
having already intimated that he would not "press the 
measure " under the present circumstances. 1 The Catholics 




1 Lord Castlereagh sent the following letter of instruction from Lon- 
don, July 9, 1801, to Lord Cornwallis : — 

" Mr Pitt will take the first opportunity of the question being regu- 
larly before the House to state his opinion at length upon it, but he 
does not think that it will be expedient either with reference to the 
success of the question itself, or the predicament in which the King 
stands, for him to press the measure under the present circumstances. 
The inclination of his mind, after having argued the question, is, not to 
vote at all. He is of opinion that to try the question now, would only 
pledge people against it ; that we should have no chance of success in 



PRESENT POLICY. 



were to be " made to feel " that there were obstacles, or 
rather that there was one obstacle which the King's min- 
isters could not surmount, and the King's ministers sup- 
posed, or believed, or hoped, that the Catholics would have 
the good sense to " see that it was their duty to be thank- 
ful for what was intended to be done for them ; and also, 
and beyond all, that they would not be so inconsiderate 
as to annoy or embarrass Government in any way under the 
circumstances. 

O'Connell joined the Freemasons in 1779. He was not 
aware that it was against Catholic principles for him to do 
so, and has given the following account of the matter him- 
self:— 

" I was a Freemason and master of a Lodge : it was at a very 



the Lords, and that if we carried it through both Houses, the King 
would at all risks refuse his assent. But a still stronger reason operates 
in liis mind for not so pressing it, which he particularly desires that I 
may represent to your Excellency — namely, the conviction that were the 
question so carried it would be deprived of all its benefits. Under these 
considerations, it is his wish that your Excellency, without bringing for- 
ward the King's name, should make the Catholics feel that an obstacle 
which the King's ministers could not surmount, precluded them from 
bringing forward the measure whilst in office ; that their attachment to 
the question was such that they felt it impossible to continue in admini- 
stration under the impossibility of proposing it with the necessary con- 
currence, and that they retired from the King's service, considering this 
line of conduct as most likely to contribute to the ultimate success of 
the measure ; to represent to them how much their future hopes must 
depend upon strengthening their cause by good conduct; in the mean- 
time, that they ought to weigh their prospects as arising from the per- 
sons who now espouse their interests, and compare them with those 



m 

w 



early period of my life, and either before an ecclesiastical censure 
had been published in the Catholic Church in Ireland prohibiting 
the taking of the Masonic oaths, or at least before I was aware of 
that censure. Freemasonry in Ireland," adds O'Connell, "may be 
said to have (apart from its oaths) no evil tendency, save as far 
as it may counteract the exertions of those most laudable and 
useful institutions, the temperance societies. The important ob- 
jection is the profane taking in vain the awful name of the Deity 
in the wanton and multiplied oaths — oaths administered on the 
book of God — without any adequate motive." 

O'Connell's movements have not been very accurately 
recorded during the early part of his life, but it would appear 
that he visited Darrynane immediately after the passing of 
the Union, as he has recorded his impressions while travel- 



which they could look to from any other quarter They must dis- 
tinctly understand that he could not concur in a hopeless attempt at 
this moment to force it, and that he must at all times repress, with the 
same decision as if he held an adverse opinion, any unconstitutional 
conduct in the Catholic body. This will give your Excellency the out- 
line of that communication which he thinks himself alone authorised 
to make to them. To look to any specific time to which they might 
attach their hopes, is so indefinite and so delicate a consideration as 
your Excellency will feel is scarcely to be touched upon. From what 
has already passed, the prospect of a change of sentiment on the part of 
the King seems too hopeless to he held out in promise to the Catholics 
as any ground of hope, and his death is that solution of the difficulty 
which all parties must equally deprecate. The prospect is, therefore, not 
very encouraging in itself, yet, unpromising as it is, we must endeavour 
to make them feel that their particular interests, as well as their duty, 
will be best consulted rather by a temperate and loyal conduct than by 
giving way to those feelings connected with disappointment and despair. 
Such are the principles we must practise, and I wish it were reason- 
able to expect that they would be implicitly acted upon." — CornwaUis 
Correspondence, vol. iii p. 3:55. 



LESSON IN PRUDENCE. 



WL 



ling among the wild mountainous districts between Kenmare 
and Killarney — 

" The year of the Union I was travelling through the mountain 
district from Killarney to Kenmare — my heart was heavy at the 
loss that Ireland had sustained, and the day was wild and gloomy. 
That desert district, too, was congenial to impressions of solemnity 
and sadness. There was not a human habitation to be seen for 
many miles ; black, giant clouds sailed slowly through the sky, 
and rested on the tops of the huge mountains ; my soul felt dreary, 
and I had many wild and Ossianic inspirations as I traversed the 
bleak solitudes. 

" It was the Union that first stirred me up to come forward in 
politics. My uncle Maurice was scarcely pleased at my taking a 
public part ; not that he approved of the Union, but politics ap- 
peared to him to be fraught with great perd." 

O'Connell got some lessons in prudence during this event- 
ful period which served him well in his after life. Young 
men, who only knew traditionally of the terrible scenes in 
which he had been a personal actor, reproached him with 
cowardice, but a coward he never was. His friend, Mr 
Daunt, has faithfully recorded his own reasons for pru- 
dence — 

" I learned from the example of the United Irishmen the lesson, 
that in order to succeed for Ireland, it was strictly necessary to 
work within the limits of the law and constitution. I saw that 
fraternities, banded illegally, never could be safe ; that invariabiy 
some person without principle would be sure to gain admission 
into such societies; and either for ordinary bribes, or else in times 
of danger for their own preservation, would betray their associates. 
Yes ; the United Irishmen taught me that all work for Ireland 
must be done openly and above-board." 







We find O'Connell in Dublin again in the winter of 1801, 
and dining with a party of Freemasons at their tavern in 
Golden Lane. As he returned home there was a cry of 
fife, then a cry for water to stop the devouring flames. 
O'Connell seized a pick-axe from an incomjietent labourer, 
and continued working with a will. The excitement and 
the potations in which he had indulged at the Freemasons' 
banquet were too much for his head. He worked on, re- 
gardless of threats or entreaties, and would soon have had 
the whole pavement ripped up, had a soldier not run a 
bayonet at him. This pointed argument had its effect, but 
it would have terminated O'Connell's career abruptly, 
only for the cover of his hunting-watch which he happened 
to wear. " If it had not been for the watch," O'Connell 
used to say, when relating this adventure, " there would 
have been an end of the agitator." 

O'Connell's extraordinary talents were soon recognised, 
and, though the pitiful illiberality of the times would not 
allow a Catholic a silk gown, he could not complain of 
public neglect. One or two of his amusing and successful 
cross-examinations got talked about, and his professional 
fortune was made — 

" O'Connell's cross-examination consisted of a series of attacks 
and retreats, which gradually clouded the minds of the judge and 
jury with Serious doubts as to the witness's credibility, and this 
even when the witness was veracious. As a necessary conse- 
quence, he became the favourite lawyer in the criminal court of 
the Munster circuit, and often rescued the victim of agrarian 



■4J& 



oppression from the fangs of law and the ignominy of the 
gallows. 

" O'Connell, on one occasion, was engaged in a will case. It 
was the allegation of the plaintiffs that the will, by which con- 
siderable property had been devised, was a forgery. The sub- 
scribing witnesses swore that the will had been signed by the 
deceased while ' life was in him ' — a mode of expression derived 
from the Irish language, and which peasants who have ceased to 
speak Irish still retain. The evidence was altogether in favour 
of the will, and the defendants had every reason to calculate on 
success, when O'Connell undertook to cross-examine one of the 
witnesses. He was struck by the persistency of this man, who, in 
reply to his questions, never deviated from the formula, ' the life 
was in him.' 

" ' On the virtue of your oath, was he alive ? ' 

" ' By the virtue of my oath, the life was in him,' repeated the 
witness. 

" ' Now I call on you in the presence of your Maker, who will 
one day pass sentence on you for this evidence ; I solemnly ask 
• — and answer me at your peril — was there not a live fly in the 
dead man's mouth when his hand was placed on the will.' 

" The witness was palsied by this question ; he trembled, 
shivered, and turned pale, and faltered out an abject confession 
that the counsellor was right — a fly had been introduced into the 
mouth of the deceased to enable the witnesses to swear that life 
was in him ! " " 

There were some curious scenes in the law courts at the 
commencement of the present century. Men were not 
unfrequently sentenced to death with a joke, 8 and were 

2 Fagin's Life of O'Connell. 

3 "What is your calling or occupation, my honest man?" said Lord 
Norbury to a witness. " Please your lordship, I keep a racket court." 
" So do I," rejoined Lord Norbury, chuckling in exulting allusion to the 



LORD NORBURY. 



hung for the merest suspicion. It was little wonder that 
O'Connell's skill in cross-examination made him the 
favourite of the multitude. To have O'Connell for counsel 
was, in the majority of cases, to secure a verdict for his 
client. 

Lord Norbury threw aside every attempt at decency in 
his judicial career. He was the descendant of a Cromwel- 
lian soldier, and had managed, by considerable talent, not 
of the highest order, to seat himself on the bench. 

O'Connell has described him thus : — 

" He had a considerable parrot-sort of knowledge of law — he 
had upon his memory an enormous number of cases, but he did 
not understand, nor was he capable of understanding, a single 
principle of law. To be sure, his charges were the strangest effu- 
sions. When charging the jury in the action brought by Guthrie 
versus Sterne, to recover damages for criminal conversation with 
the plaintiff' s wife, Norbury said — ' Gentlemen of the jury, The 
defendant in this case is Henry William Godfrey Baker Sterne — 
and there, gentlemen, you have him from stem to Sterne. I am 
free to observe, gentlemen, that if this Mr Henry William God- 
frey Baker Sterne had as many Christian virtues as he has Chris- 
tian names, we never should see the honest gentleman figuring 
here as defendant in an action for crim. con.' " 



noise, uproar, and racket which his witticisms constantly awakened in 
court,. 

" When they were burying Norbury," added O'Connell, " the grave 
was so deep that the ropes by which they were letting down the coffin 
did not reach to the bottom. The coffin remained hanging at mid-depth 
while somebodj was sent for more rope. 'Ay,' cried a butcher's ap- 
prentice, 'give him rope enough. It would be a pity to stint him. It's 
himself never grudged a poor man the rope !'" 



BEARDING A JUDGE. 



O'Connell was always ready to help his legal brethren. 
For the judges, he cared very little. His popularity was 
already established on the permanent basis of success, and 
they could do him little harm. On one occasion, when a 
young barrister, named Hartley, rose to make his first 
motion, he was constantly and rudely interrupted by Judge 
Johnson, his learned brother, Lord Norbury, joining in the 
ill-natured interruptions with his usual zest. 

The young barrister at last became hopelessly confused. 
At this moment O'Connell entered the court, ascertained 
what was going on, urgently entreated some of the older 
members of the bar to interfere, but they were all unwilling. 
Lord Norbury was not a person to be bearded with im- 
punity. O'Copnell no longer hesitated ; whether in a war of 
wtiitjs or swords he was equally ready to throw himself 
between the oppressor and the oppressed, without a thought 
of self. He addressed the bench fearlessly — 

" My lords, I respectfully submit that Mr Martley has a perfect 
title to a full hearing. He has a duty to discharge to his client, 
and should not, 1 submit, be impeded in the discharge of that duty. 
Mr Martley is not personally known to me, but I cannot sit here 
in silence while a brother-barrister is treated so discourteously." 
" Oh ! Mr O'Connell, we have heard Mr Martley," said Lord 
Norbury, "and we cannot allow the time of the court to be 
further wasted." — " Pardon me, my lord, you have not heard him. 
The young gentleman has not been allowed to explain his case — 
an explanation which, I am quite sure, he is capable of giving if 
your lordships will afford him the opportunity." — "Mr O'Con- 
nell," said Judge Johnson, with an air of great pomposity, " are 






p 



A CONFIRMED OFFENDER. 



you engaged in this case that you thus presume to interfere 1" 
— " My lord, I am not ; I merely rise to defend the privileges of 
the bar, and I will not permit them to be violated either in my 
own, or the person of any other member of the profession.'' 
'• Well, well ; well, well," interposed Lord ISiorbury, " we '11 hear 
Mr Martley — we '11 hear Mr Martley. Sit down, Mr O'Connell ; 
sit down." 

Having thus carried his point, Mr O'Connell, in obedience 
to the bench, sat down ; and Mr Martley, whose gratitude to 
O'Connell was sincere and lasting, stated his case so satis- 
factorily as to obtain his motion. 

O'Connell on one occasion was engaged to defend a 
highwayman, who had committed robbery on the public 
road in the vicinity of Cork ; and, owing to the masterly 
manner in which O'Connell sifted the evidence and cross- 
examined the witnesses, the robber was acquitted. The 
following year, on returning to Cork, O'Connell saw the 
same hardened face resting on the same well-worn dock, 
grim and ruffianly, and accused of very nearly the same 
crime — burglary, accompanied by an aggravated assault, 
which was proximate to murder. The culprit, as in the 
former case, was fortunate enough to secure the services of 
O'Connell, who puzzled the witnesses, perplexed the judge, 
and bewildered the jury — owing to whose hopeless disagree- 
ment the prisoner was discharged. His industrious client, 
when restored to liberty, had no notion of sitting down in 
sluggish idleness : he stole a collier-brig, sold the cargo, 
purchased arms with the price, and cruised along the coast 



.--VS 



GRATITUDE OF TUE PRISONER. 



in quest of booty ; and when O'Connell returned to 
Cork he was once more in the dock charged with piracy. 
His defence was undertaken by O'Connell for the third 
time. O'Connell showed that the crime did not come 
under the cognizance of the court, as it had been perpe- 
trated on the high seas ; it came under the cognizance 
only of the Admiralty. The gratitude of the prisoner 
was warmly expressed — raising his hands and eyes to 
heaven, he exclaimed, " Oh ! may the Lord spare you to 
me ! " 

O'Connell was counsel before Judge Day on another 
occasion, for a man who stole some goats. The fact was 
proved, whereupon O'Connell produced to Judge Day an 
old Act of Parliament, empowering the owners of corn- 
fields, gardens, or plantations, to kill and destroy all hares, 
rabbits, and goats trespassing thereon. O'Connell con- 
tended that this legal power of destruction clearly demon- 
strated that goats were not property, and thence inferred 
that the stealer of goats was not legally a thief, or punish- 
able as such. Judge Day was so unacquainted with the 
law that he charged the jury accordingly, and the prisoner 
was acquitted. 4 

But O'Connell's practice was not confined to criminal 
cases. The following case which he has left on record 

4 However deficient Judge Day may have been in forensic ability, he 
was an excellent shot — and he knew it. O'Connell used to call Lord 
Norberry " one of Castlereagh's unprincipled janissaries. 



IK 



1 




A POOR SLOVENLY BLOCKHEAD." 

shows how singularly clear his mind was, and how he 
grasped a subject at once in all its bearings : — 

" 1 recollect I once had a client, an unlucky fellow, against 
uliniu ,i verdict had been given For a balance of £1 100, Wewere 
trying to set aside that verdict. I was young at the har at that 
time; my senior counsel contented themselves with abusing the 
adverse witnesses, detecting flaws in their evidence, and making 
sparkling points ; in short, they made very flourishing, eloquent, 
but rather ineffective speeches. WMethey flourished awaj l gol 
our client's books, and taking my place immediately under the 
judge's bench, 1 opened the accounts and went- through them all 
from beginning to end. 1 got the whole drawn out by double 
entry, and got numbers for every voucher. The result plainly 
was, that so far from there being a just balance of <:l 100 against 
our poor devil, I here aci 1 1 ,■ 1 1 1 \ » a i a balance of £700 in his favour, 
although the poor slovenly blockhead did not know it himself. 
When mi turn came, I made the facts as clear as possible to judge 

and jury ; and the jury inquired if they eould not find a verdict 

of £700 in his favour. I just tell j ou i lie circumstance," continued 
O'Connell, " to show you that 1 kept an eye on that inipurLant 
branch of my profession." 








H 



legs stoutly built ; and as he at that moment stood, one arm in his 
side pocket, the other thrust into a waistcoat, which was almost 
completely unbuttoned from the heat of the day, he would have 
made a good figure for the rapid but fine-finishing touch of Harlowe. 
His head was covered with a light fur cap, which, partly thrown 
back, displayed that breadth of forehead which I have never yet 
seen absent from real talent. His eyes appeared to me, at that 
instant, to be between a light blue and a grey colour. His face was 
pale and sallow, as if the turmoil of business, the shade of care, or 
the study of midnight, had chased away the glow of health and 
youth. Around his mouth played a cast of sarcasm, which, to a 
quick eye, at once betrayed satire ; and it appeared as if the lips 
could be easily resolved into risus sardonicus. His head was 
somewhat larger than that which a modern doctrine denominates 
the ' medium size : ' and it was well supported by a stout and well- 
foundationed pedestal, which was based on a breast — full, round, 
prominent, and capacious. 

" He was dressed in an olive-brown surtout, black trousers, and 
black waistcoat. His cravat was carelessly tied — the knot almost 
undone from the heat of the day ; and as he stood with his hand 
across his bosom, and his eyes bent on the ground, he was the very 
picture of a public character hurrying away on some important 
matter which required all of personal exertion and mental energy. 
Often as I have seen him since, I have never beheld him in so 
*t" iking or pictorial an attitude. 

" ' Quick with the horses ! ' was his hurried ejaculation, as he re- 
covered himself from his reverie and flung himself into his carriage. 
The whip was cracked, and away went the chariot with the same 
sloud of dust and the same tremendous pace. 

" I did not see him pay any money. He did not enter the inn. 
He called for no refreshment, nor did he utter a word to any person 
around him ; he seemed to be obeyed by instinct. ' And while I 
marked the chariot thundering along the street, which had all its 



O'CONNELL AND SERJEANT LEFROT. 259 



a! 



then spectators turned on the cloud-enveloped vehicle, my curiosity 
■was intensely excited, and I instantly descended to learn the name 
of this extraordinary stranger. 

" Most malapropos, however, were my inquiries. Unfortunately 
the landlord was out, the waiter could not tell his name, and the 
hostler ' knew nothing whatsomdever of him, oney he was in the 
most oncommonest' hurry.' A short time, however, satisfied my 
curiosity. The next day brought me to the capital of the county. 
It was the assize time. Very fond of oratory, I went to the court- 
house to hear the forensic eloquence of the ' home circuit.' I had 
scarcely seated myself when the same greyish eye, broad forehead, 
portly figure, and strong tone of voice arrested my attention. He 
was just on the moment of addressing the jury, and I anxiously 
waited to hear the speech of a man who had already so strongly 
interested me. After looking at the judge steadily for a moment, 
he began his speech exactly in the following pronunciation — ' My 
Lund, — Gentlemen of the jury.' 

" ' Who speaks ? ' instantly whispered I. 

" ' Counsellor O'Connell,' was the reply. 

" Counsel in a case ill which his client was capitally charged, 
O'Connell undertook the defence, although the attorney considered 
the chances as utterly hopeless. O'Connell knew it was useless to 
attempt a defence in the ordinary way, the evidence being more than 
sufficient to insure a conviction. Serjeant Lefroy, then very young, 
happened to preside, in the absence of one of the judges who had 
fallen ill. Knowing the character of the judge, O'Connell put a 
number of illegal questions to the witness, which the crown prose- 
cutor immediately objected to. The learned sergeant decided rather 
peremptorily that he could not allow Mr O'Connell to proceed with 
his line of examination. ' As you refuse me permission to defend 
my client, I leave his fate in your hands,' said O'Connell — ' his 
blood will be on your head if he be condemned." O'Connell flung 
out of the court in apparent displeasure, and paced up and down on 
the flagway outside for half-an-hour. At the end of this time he saw 










THE HOPE OF CLIENTS. 



the attorney for the defence rushing out in a great hurry without his 
hat. ' He 's acquitted ! he 's acquitted ! ' exclaimed the attorney, in 
breathless haste and joyous exultation. O'Connell smiled with a 
peculiar expression at the success of his stratagem — for such it was. 
He knew that a judge so young as Lefroy must naturally shrink "in 
horror from the terrible responsibility of destroying human life. He 
therefore flung the onus upon the judge, who, in the absence of 
O'Connell, took up the case, and became unconsciously the advocate 
of the prisoner. He conceived a prejudice in favour of the accused, 
cross-examined the witnesses, and finally charged the jury in the 
prisoner's favour. The consequence was the complete and unexpected 
acquittal of the accused. ' My only chance,' said O'Connell, ' was 
to throw the responsibility on the judge, who had a natural timidity 
of incurring a responsibility so serious. ' " 

If O'Connell was the hope of clients, he was certainly 
the terror of judges. It was useless to attempt to put a 
man down who, in nine cases out of ten, knew more law 
than they did, and whose assurance, right or wrong, was 
illimitable. It was scarcely wise to provoke an encounter. 
He was fond of relating anecdotes of his bar life, and as 
they were all full of interest, and generally full of wit and 
humour, his friends were never weary of listening to him. 
Fortunately their authenticity, even iu detail, has been 
secured by the faithful record made of them from day to 
day, by the gentleman who for many years accompanied 
him in his journeys. 

Before referring to O'Connell's political life, we give a 

few more of these reminiscences : — 

" On one occasion, O'Connell was asked by Mr Daunt, if the Irish 
bar had not a higher reputation for wit in the last century than 





BAR ANECDOTES. 



the present ? He said they had now no such wit as Curran ; 
but that other members of the bar participated in a great degree in 
the laughter-stirring quality. 'Holmes,' said he, 'has a great share 

of very clever sarcasm Plunket had great wit ; he was a 

creature of exquisite genius. Nothing could be happier than his 
hit in reply to Lord Kedesdale about the kites. In a speech before 
Redesdale, Plunket had occasion to use the phrase kites very fre- 
quently, as designating fraudulent bills and promissory notes. Lord 
Kedesdale, to whom the phrase was quite new, at length interrupted 
him, saying : 'I don't quite understand your meaning, Mr Plunket. 
In England, kites are paper playthings used by boys ; in Ireland 
they seem to mean some species of monetary transaction.' ' There 
is another difference, my lord,' said Plunket. 'In England, the wind 
raises the kites ; in Ireland, the kites raise the wind.' 

" Curran was once defending an attorney's bill of costs before 
Lord Clare. ' Here now,' said Clare, ' is a flagitious imposition ; 
how can you defend this item, Mr Curran ? — " To writing innumer- 
able letters, £100."' 'Why, my lord,' said Curran, 'nothing can be 
more reasonable. It is not a penny a letter.' And Cumin's reply 
to Judge Robinson is exquisite in its way. ' I '11 commit you, sir,' 
said the judge. ' I hope you '11 never commit a worse thing, my 
lord !' retorted Curran. 

" 'Wilson Croker, too,' said Mr O'Connell, 'had humour. When 
the crier wanted to expel the dwarf O'Leary, who was about three 
feet four inches high, from the jury-box in Tralee, Croker said, 
' Let him stay where he is — Be minimis non curat lex " (Law cares 
not for small things). And when Tom Goold got retainers from 
both sides, ' Keep them both,' said Croker ; ' you may conscien- 
tiously do so. You can be counsel for one side, and of use to the 
other.' 

" Speaking of Judge Day while he was yet alive, O'Connell said : 
'No man would take more pains to serve a friend ; but as a judge 
they could scarcely have placed a less efficient man upon the bench 
. ... He once said to me at the Cork assizes, 'Mr O'Connell, 



i 



m 



BAB ANECDOTES. 



I must not allow you to make a speech ; the fact is, I am always 
of opinion with the last speaker, and therefore I will not let you 
say one word.' ' My lord,' said I, ' that is precisely the reason why 
I '11 let nobody have the last word but myself, if I can help it.' I 
had the last word, and Day charged in favour of my client. Day 
was made judge in 1798. He had been chairman of Kilmainham, 
with a salary of £1200 a-year. When he got on the bench, Bully 
Egan got the chairmanship. 

" ' Was Bully Egan a good lawyer 1 ' 

" ' He was a successful one ; his bullying helped him through. 
He was a desperate duellist. One of his duels was fought with a 
Mr O'Reilly, who fired before the word was given ; the shot did 
not take effect. ' Well, at any rate, my honour is safe,' said 
O'Reilly. 'Is it so?' said Egan; 'egad, I'll take a slap at your 
honour for all that;' and Egan deliberately held his pistol pointed 
for full five minutes at O'Reilly, whom he kept for that period in 
the agonies of mortal suspense. 

"' Did he kill him V 

" ' Not he,' replied O'Connell ; ' he couldn't hit a hay-stack. 
If courage appertained to duelling, he certainly possessed it. But 
in everything else he was the most timid man alive. Once I stated, 
in the Court of Exchequer, that I had, three days before, been in 
the room with a man in fever 120 miles off. The instant I said so, 
Egan shuffled away to the opposite side of the court through pure 
fear of infection. 

" Judge Day was a simpleton, but Judge Boyd was worse — he 
was a drunkard. ' He was so fond of brandy,' said O'Connell, 
' that he always kept a supply of it in court, upon the desk before 
him, in an ink-stand of peculiar make. His lordship used to lean 
his arm upon the desk, bob down his head and steal a hurried sip 
from time to time through a quill that lay among the pens ; which 
manoeuvre he flattered himself escaped observation. 

" One day it was sought by counsel to convict a witness of having 
been intoxicated at the period to which his evidence referred. Mr 



m 



M 



1 



Harry Deane Grady laboured hard upon the other hand to show 
that the man had been sober. ' Come now, my good man,' said 
Judge Boyd, ' it is a very important consideration ; tell the court 
truly, were you drunk or were you sober upon that occasion)' 

" ' Oh, quite sober, my lord,' broke in Grady, with a very signifi- 
cant look at the ink-stand — ' as sober as a judge.' " 

If O'Connell was addicted to cajoling witnesses, he seems 
to have been equally happy in protecting unfledged pro- 
fessionals. We have already given one instance of his 
interference on their behalf. He happened to be in court 
when a young attorney was called upon to make an admis- 
sion which might have been injurious to his client. O'Con- 
nell at once stood up and told him to make no admission. 
Baron M'Cleland, who was trying the case, asked if Mr 
O'Connell had a brief in the case. Mr O'Connell had no 
brief, except the very general one, of an ardent desire to 
benefit the whole human race as far as it was possible for 
him to do so. He replied : — 

" I have not, my lord j but I shall have one when the case goes 
down to the assizes." 

"When / was at the bar, it was not my habit to anticipate 
briefs." 

" When you were at the bar, I never chose you for a model ; and 
now that you are on the bench, I shall not submit to your dictation." 

" There was a barrister of the name of Parsons at the bar in my 
earlier practice," said O'Connell, " who had a good deal of humour. 
Parsons hated the whole tribe of attorneys ; perhaps they had not 
treated him very well — but his prejudice against them was eternally 
exhibiting itself. One day, in the hall of the Four Courts, an attor- 
ney came up to him to beg his subscription towards burying a brother 



attorney, who had died in distressed circumstances. Parsons took 
out a pound note. ' Oh. Mr Parsons,' said the applicant, ' I do not 
want so much; I only ask a shilling from each contributor.' ' Oh, 
take it — take it,' replied Parsons ; ' I would most willingly subscribe 
money any day to put an attorney underground.' 'But really, Mr Par- 
sons, I have limited myself to a shilling from each person.' For 
pity's sake, my good sir, take the pound — and bury twenty of them.' 
" One of the most curious things I remember in my bar experi- 
ence," said O'Connell, " is Judge Foster's charging for the acquittal 
of a homicide named Denis Halligan, who was tried, with four 
others, at the Limerick assizes many years ago. Foster totally mis- 
took the evidence of the principal witness for the prosecution. The 
offence charged was aggravated manslaughter, committed on some 
poor wretch, whose name I forget. The first four prisoners were 
shown to be criminally abetting; but the fifth, Denis Halligan, wr.s 
proved to have inflicted the fatal blow. The evidence of the 
principal witness against him was given in these words: 'I saw 
Denis Halligan, my lord (he that's in the dock there), take a 
vacancy 6 at the poor soul that's kilt, and give him a wipe with a 
clch-alpeen,* and lay him down as quiet as a child.' The judge 
charged against the first four prisoners, and sentenced them to seven 
years' imprisonment each ; then proceeding to the fifth, the rascal 
who really committed the homicide, he addressed him thus : ' Denis 
Halligan, I have purposely reserved the consideration of your case 
for the last. Your crime, as being a participator in the affray, is 
doubtless of a grievous nature ; yet I cannot avoid taking into 
consideration the mitigating circumstances that attend it. By the 
evidence of the witness it clearly appears that you were the only one 
of the party who showed any mercy to the unfortunate deceased. 
You took him to a vacant seat, and you wiped him with a clean 
napkin, and (to use the affecting and poetic language of the witness) 
you laid him down with the gentleness one shows to a little child. 
In consideration of these circumstances, which considerably miti- 



. an aim at an unguarded part. <> C'Uh-uljjcon, a bludgeon. 



CHOICE OF A WIFE. 



gate your offence, the only punishment I shall inflict on you is an 
imprisonment of three weeks' duration.' So Denis Halligan got off 
by Foster's mistaking a vacancy for a vacant seat, and a ckh-alpcen 
for a clean napkin.'' 

O'Connell married in the summer of 1802. His early 
life had not been in all respects a model of virtue, but from 
this period his habits were exemplary. In later years, he 
was not only attached to his religion theoretically, as he 
had always been, but he was also a most edifying and 
practical Catholic. 

His bride was a namesake and cousin of his own ; and 
as she was destitute of worldly goods, his uncle Maurice, 
with characteristic prudence, objected to the match ; but 
O'Connell took his own way in this as in other matters, 
and he never regretted his choice. He used to speak of her 
affectionately, and perhaps with a little of the garrulous- 
ness of age in later years. It would appear to have been 
entirely a love-match ; and the old man used to say, his 
Mary " gave him thirty-five years of the purest happiness 
that man ever enjoyed." 

His profession made him independent. During the first 
year he was at the bar, he made £58 ; the second year, 
£150 ; the third year, £200 ; and the fourth, about £300. 
From which time he advanced rapidly, and made as much 
as £9000 in one year. Mrs O'Connell had been educated 
in Tralee, and he used to tell the following anecdote of her 
childhood : — 

" When my wife was a little girl, she was obliged to pass, on her 






% 



way to school, every day, under the arch of the gaol ; and Hands, 
the gaoler of Tralee, a most gruff, uncouth-looking fellow, always 
made her stop and curtsey to him. She despatched the curtsey 
with all imaginable expedition, and ran away to school, to get out 
of his sight as fast as possible." 

O'Connell took great delight in relating the following of 
his wife's grandmother : — 

" It was my delight to quiz the old lady, by pretending to com- 
plain of her grand-daughter's want of temper. ' Madam,' said I, 
' Mary would do very well, only she is so cross.' ' Cross, sir 1 My 
Mary cross ? Sir, you must have provoked her very much ! Sir, 
you must yourself be quite in fault ! Sir, my little girl was always 
the gentlest, sweetest creature bom.' " 7 

O'Connell was very fond of children, and used not unfre- 
queutly to commence a conversation with them hy asking 
them, if they knew that it was he who obtained emancipa- 
tion for them ? A friend once spoke to him about sending 
his little girl to school; he replied with some warmth — 

" Oh, no ! never take the child from her mother, 
never ! " 

The same friend made an apology for bringing in hia 
children. 

" ' Your time is so limited,' said he ; ' and I fear they must tease 
you.' 

" ' Your apology,' returned O'Connell, ' reminds me of my friend 
Peter Hussey, who was not remarkable for suavity. ' Dan,' said 
Peter to me, ' you should not bring in your children after dinner, 
it is a heavy tax upon the admiration of the company.' 'Never 



; 1; 



; 
1). 



tin 






mind, Peter,' said I ; ' I admire them so much myself, that I don't 
require any one to help me.' " 

O'Connell's marriage took place on the 23d of June 
1802. The ceremony was strictly private, but two of his 
brothers were present. It took place in Dame Street, 
Dublin, at the house of Miss O'Connell's brother-in-law, 
Mr James Connor. The ceremony was performed by the 
Rev. Mr Finn, then parish priest of Irishtown. 

O'Connell still continued a member of the Lawyers' 
Corps, and his life must have been constantly in danger. 
When passing St James Street, Dublin, he used to point 
out a house which he had searched in 1803. It was then 
the Grand Canal Hotel. The canals were then to Ireland 
what the railways are now, and at that period travelling by 
water was preferred for many reasons. 

After O'Connell had stood sentry for three successive 
nights, Mr Purcell O'Gormau's turn came. O'Connell 
observed that he had been recently ill, and saw that 
exposure to the night air would probably kill him :— 

" ' I shall be in a sad predicament,' he said, ' unless you take my 
turn of duty for me. If I refuse, they '11 accuse me of cowardice or 
croppy ism ; if I mount guard, it will be the death of me ! ' So I 
took his place, and thus stood guard for six consecutive nights. 
One night a poor boy was taken up in Dame Street after midnight ; 
he said in his defence that he was going on a message from his 
master, a notary-public, to give notice for protest of a bill. The hour 
seemed a very unlikely one for such a purpose, and we searched his 
person for treasonable documents. We found in his waistcoat 
pocket a sheet of paper, on which were rudely scrawled several draw- 




TEE REIGN OF TERROR. 




ings of pikes. He turned pale with fright, and trembled all over, 
but persisted in the account he had given us of himself. It was 
easily tested, and a party immediately went to his master's house to 
make inquiry. His master confirmed his statement, but the visitors, 
whose suspicions were excited by the drawing, rigidly searched the 
whole house for pikes — prodded the beds to try if there were any 
concealed in them — found all right, and returned to our guard-house 
about three in the morning." 

The reign of terror in Ireland by no means concluded 
with the Rebellion of 1798. Indeed, recent risings, or at- 
tempts at rising, which took place soon after, was a suffi- 
cient evidence that no amount of severity could put down 
such attempts, however hopeless. Another reminiscence of 
this period was given thus by the Liberator. The subject 
was a schoolmaster, named O'Connor, who was hanged in 
1797, and whose head was left for many years over the gaol 
at Naas — 

" He made," said O'Connell, " a wicked speech in the dock. He 
complained of taxes, and oppressions of various descriptions, and 
then said, ' Before the flesh decays from my bones — nay, before my 
body is laid in the earth, the avenger of tyranny will come. The 
French are on the sea while I utter these words ; they will soon effect 
their short and easy voyage, and strike terror and dismay into the 
cruel oppressors of the Irish people.' When the prisoner concluded, 
Judge Finucane commenced his charge, in the course of which he 
thus attacked the politics, predictions, and arguments of the unhappy 
prisoner : ' O'Connor, you 're a great blockhead for your pains. 
What you say of the French is all nonsense. Don't you know, you 
fool, that Lord Howe knocked their ships to smithereens last year 1 
And therefore, O'Connor, you shall return to the place from whence 
you came, and you shall be delivered into the hands of the common 




/ 




A CHARACTERISTIC REPLY. 



executioner, and you shall be hanged by the Oh ! I must not 

forget, there was another point of nonsense in your speech. You 
talked about the tax on leather, and said it would make us all go 
barefoot. Now, O'Connor, I've the pleasure to inform you that I 
have got a large estate in Clare, and there is not a tenant upon it 
that hasn't got as good boots and shoes as myself. And therefore, 
O'Connor, you shall return to the place from whence you came, and 
you shall be delivered into the hands of the common executioner, and 
you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and your body 
shall be divided into quarters ; and may the Lord have mercy on 
your soul.' But O'Connor's reply was characteristic — 'If you are 
kind to your tenants, my lord, may God bless you.' " 

Few Irishmen, indeed, except the unhappy infidel leaders 
of the Rebellion, had died with words of anger or revenge 
upon their lips. Their own lives they were willing to 
sacrifice ; they only asked in return some little amelioration 
of the misery of those whom they left after them. But 
these men were driven to deeds of desperation " by a 
tyranny worse than that of Robespierre." 8 



8 " The greatest difficulty which I experience is to control the violence 
of our loyal friends, who would, if I did not keep the strictest hand upon 
them, convert the system of martial law (which, God knows, is of itself 
bad enough) into a more violent and intolerable tyranny than that of 
Robespierre. The vilest informers are haunted out from the prisons to 
attack, by the most barefaced perjury, the lives of all who are suspected 
of being, or of having been, disaffected ; and, indeed, every Roman 
Catholic of influence is in great danger. You will have seen by tli« ad- 
dresses, both in the north and south, that my attempt to moderate that 
violence and cruelty which has once driven, and which, if tolerated, 
must again soon drive, this wretched country into rebellion, is not re- 
probated by the voice of the countiy, although it has appeared so 
culpable in the eyes of the absentees." — Cornwallis' Correspondence, vol. 
ii. p. 145. 



W/ 

I 



The most important political work of O'Connell's early 
life was his connection with the Catholic Association. 
His earliest, and some of his most brilliant, speeches were 
made in connection with that movement. He was a leader 
without the name of a leader, and with the serious disad- 
vantage of acting under men who had neither his disin- 
terestedness, his intellect, nor his patriotism. 

In 1793 the forty-shilling freeholders were permitted 
to vote, simply because they could swell the number of 
slaves who enhanced the value of the borough held by 
their masters. The few Irish Catholic peers were neither 
allowed voice nor vote in electing their representatives. 
They were still timid, hesitating, cautious, thankful for 
the little they had, and terribly afraid of losing it by the 
least effort to obtain more. 

The subjects in dispute between the Catholic party and 
the Government were, with some few modifications of cir- 
cumstances, very much what they are now. The Govern- 
ment, having permitted the Catholic to educate his children, 
wished to have the control of that education. The same 
battle is being continued, under more liberal destinies, at 
the present day and hour. Protestant statesmen have yet 
to learn that the Catholic Church does not change — that 
the principles which she held in the first century are pre- 
cisely the same as those which she holds in the nineteenth. 
Circumstances, of which she alone is the judge, may require 
some alteration in the application of these principles, but 



ft 



J 



circumstances do not alter the principles themselves. The 
Church is divinely appointed to " teach all nations," and she 
cannot permit her children to receive secular instruction, 
if that instruction is given in such a way as to interfere 
with the Divine teaching which belongs exclusively to 
her. She does not indeed depreciate or undervalue human 
learning; on the contrary, even in religious orders, if 
special gifts are developed, these gifts are encouraged and 
cultivated with a care and assiduity of which the world 
knows hut little, even while it obtains the benefit of its 
results. 9 



• We give one or two instances. In science, we would mention 
Father Secchi, the eminent Jesuit, whose fame as an astronomer is 
more than European, whose life is devoted to the science for which he 
has such manifest talent. In tin- early part of the seventeenth century, 
the " Annals of the Four Masters "were compiled by a Franciscan friar ; 
and this work has been republished, and translated in eight octavo 
volumes, by a Protestant historian, within the last few years. His re- 
ligious superiors, so far from preventing or depreciating his labours, wire 
the first to forward them. Out of their poverty they supplied sufficient 
funds for his journeys and the purchase of old manuscripts ; while his 
monastic brothers waited on him and aided him in all possible ways, so 
as to forward and' lighten his labour. 

Nor has the Church failed to encourage even cloistered nuns in literary 
labour where there has been a manifest talent for such work. A glance 
at M. Dapunloup's " Studious Women" will give ample evidence of this. 
Of St Lisba he writes that St Boniface admired her on account of her 
solid learning — " erudition-is sapientia," and that " he took time, which 
he did not consider lost, from his apostolic labours, to correct her Latin 
verses." In the twelfth century, St Hildegarde, a cloistered nun, and 
a canonised saint, astonished her contemporaries by her learned cosmo- 
lofical works ; and in the sixteenth century, Eleanore Cornaro was ad- 
mitted doctor at Milan, and died in the odour of sanctity. 



The Government, or should we not rather say the world, 
has heen always desirous of secularising the priesthood. 
Practically, the attempt seems abandoned in our own 
times, because the attempt has been found simply hopeless. 
The priesthood are not intended to be secularised, they are 
intended to be a distinct class, — they are not intended to 
exhibit the manners, or habits, or customs of the world. 
Yet how many, and what futile, efforts have been made by 
Government to have seculars and aspirants to the priest- 
hood educated together, for the avowed purpose of accom- 
plishing the very end which the Church does not desire to 
accomplish. 

All this arises from one simple cause. Protestants do 
not believe in a divinely-instituted priesthood, — they do 
not like to see a class of men set apart from their fellows, 
in profession, in habits of life, and in exterior being. But 
such a class has existed since the foundation of Chris- 
tianity, and will exist to the end of time. To fight against 
it, or against the circumstances of its being, is hopeless, and 
being hopeless, is unwise. 

Amongst liberal Protestants, who are not irreconcilably 
prejudiced, there is, if I may use the expression, a good- 
natured desire that priests should be " more like other 
people." But this is precisely what priests are not in- 
tended to be. Such Protestants naturally point to their 
own clergy, to that indefinable, and therefore indescrib- 
able, polish which is given to them by a university educa- 




PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC CLERGY. 273 



tion, to that fashionable manner which makes them undis- 
tinguishable from other gentlemen, so that their profession 
is only indicated by some trifling difference of dress, not 
sufficient to mark them as a distinct class, just sufficient 
to give a little appearance of distinction in position. This 
they accept as a badge of office, in the same way as they 
accept a lawyer's wig or gown ; and they ask, often with 
the most kindly feeling, why Catholic priests cannot play 
the role of fashionable gentlemen also ? The answer is 
simple ; it is because Catholic priests are not intended to 
be in the world, or to be of the world, as Protestant clergy- 
men must necessarily be. 

They are men who are to live alone and apart from their 
fellows. They are men vowed neither to possess houses 
nor lands, wife nor child. They are men who have solemnly 
and permanently sacrificed all the pleasures of life. Blame 
them for this if you will, but do not blame them for being 
faithful to what they have vowed. 

O'Connell set himself steadfastly against every attempt 
to secularise the Catholic clergy; and how frequent and 
how persistent these attempts were, history has recorded. 
He had, as we have said before, a peculiar aptitude for 
taking in the whole bearings of a case. He had a rapid 
power of comprehension. Had he been a soldier, we sus- 
pect his army would not have been very easily defeated; for 
he saw in a moment what was weak and required strength- 
ening, what was threatened by the enemy, no matter how 



274 O'COSSELL AXD THE HIERARCHY. 



insidiously it might be disguised. 0'Connell had to deal 
with men whose perceptions were by no means so clear as 
his own, and who were incapacitated, to a certain extent, 
either by position or education, from seeing the dangers 
which threatened them. 

The Catholic laity of the upper classes were only anxious 
to obtain any concession that might be offered, and were 
seldom able to understand that a concession might be a 
disadvantage. The Government, while willing to render 
certain concessions, was unwilling to render them gener- 
ously. Securities were demanded of such a nature as to 
make the concession either positively injurious or simply 
useless. The majority of Catholics looked only at the con- 
cession which was good in itself. O'Connell looked at the 
concomitant circumstances, which were sometimes evil. 

To the upper classes, who were unable to take his large 
view of public affairs, he opposed himself with an energy 
which sometimes bordered on contempt ; but he rarely 
allowed himself to pass the line of decorum. 

His position with the Catholic hierarchy was unfortu- 
nately very difficult ; but he conducted himself in their 
regard with a tact and respectful delicacy, which was so 
perfect, as to warrant the conclusion that it arose more 
from his deep sense of religion, and his firm faith in the 
hierarchy of the Church, than from any worldly policy. 

The two great subjects of discussion were the Veto, and 
the arrangements to be made for the College of Maynooth. 






Mm 



G>; 






y^i; COLLEGE OF MAYNOOTH. 275 

The College of Maynooth was founded originally for the 
priesthood ; but as the English Government were extremely 
anxious that lay students should be admitted also, some 
lay students were admitted. No sooner was this accom- 
plished than a dispute arose ; one party of Protestants 
wishing that the number of lay students should be increased, 
and every facility afforded for their accommodation, the 
other party declaring that the laity should not be admitted at 
all. With these disputes O'Connell had little connection. 
We shall, therefore, pass to the consideration of the Veto 
question, after giving a few extracts from the private cor- 
respondence of the times on the subject of Maynooth 
College. 1 



1 The Earl of Hard wick wrote thus to the Right Hon. Henry Adding- 
ton on the 21st December 1801 :— " It would be very curious if, after 
all that has passed, Lord Clare should be attempting to acquire popu- 
larity with the Catholics at the expense of the Government. He seems 
to me, with a great share of cleverness and vivacity, to be very deficient 
in consistency and precision in his ideas ; for at the very moment that 
he is contending for the policy of a mixed education of lay boys with 
those intended for the priesthood, he asserts that it is the fixed system 
of the priests not to suffer such mixed education, and, moreover, cannot 
deny the greater probability of the lay scholars, under priestly discipline 
and with priestly associates, becoming monastic, than of the clerical 
pupils acquiring from their lay schoolfellows the more liberal habits of 
those who are not secluded from the world. In considering the policy 
of this measure, it may be worthy of observation, that any such estab- 
lishment necessarily tends to perpetuate the distinction, which, so far 
as education is concerned, was intended to be done away, by giving an 
equal admission to Catholic and Protestant pupils at Trinity College, 
Dublin." 



There can be no doubt whatever that the object of 
Government in pressing the Veto was to obtain a complete 
control over the Catholic clergy. The advance was made 
with the utmost caution, and the attempt was continued 
from time to time with rare prudence. It seems little 
short of miraculous that the Catholic Church should not 
have yielded to an offer which looked so fair, which was 
made with such an appearance of good will and generosity. 



Minutes of Conversation between the Right Hon. Charles Abbot 
and Lord Kilwarden at Cork Abbey, Dec. 25, 1801. 
In the course of this conversation, which lasted above an hour, the 
following points were distinctly stated and re-stated by Lord Kil- 
warden : — 

1. The original purpose of the College of Maynooth was to educate 
only priests. The proofs of it are — 1. That it originated in the cir- 
cumstances of the times which had revolutionised the Continent, and 
rendered the former places of educating the Irish priests (viz., St Omer, 
Paris, &c.) unlit and unsafe, and rendered it desirable to educate theni 
at home. 

2. The speech of the Minister (Mr Pelham), in opening the measure 
to Parliament, pointed only at that object. 

3. Lord K., who was then Attorney-General, and commissioned by 
Mr Pelham to confer with the Catholics, had no conference but with 
Dr Troy (titular Archbishop of Dublin) and another priest ; and when, 
under his general instructions to talk with them, he wished them to 
make the College a joint school for the laity and clergy, they would not 
hear of it, and stated it to be prohibited by their own rules, 

(Notes then follow of some remarks made on the manners of the stu- 
dents, which were not very complimentary to them.) 

4. As to the abstract policy, Lord K. would advise the Crown and 
Parliament, with a view only to the present race, to govern by a strong 



TEE CATEOLIC CEVRCE AND TEE VETO. 277 

Undoubtedly, a few of the Irish Catholic bishops were 
deceived for a time — probably, from not seeing the real 
drift of the matter. The English Catholics, with the ex- 
ception of Dr Milner, did their best to place this chain on 
the necks of their clergy. 



military force, and keep down the Catholics by the bayonet ; but with 
a view to posterity he should wish to educate the Protestants and 
Catholics together : and such was the object of opening Trinity College 
to the Catholics. 

5. I told him that now at Trinity College the Provost informed me 
there were many sons of opulent Catholics, and that their numbers of 
this class increased. 

On the 28th December 1801, the Earl of Clare wrote a Memorandum 
on the original institution of Maynooth, from which we give the follow- 
ing extract. It shows that the Catholic hierarchy were as thoroughly 

opposed to uniting lay and secular education then as they are now : 

" After a pretty long negotiation with Dr Troy, to which I submitted 
very reluctantly by Lord Cornwallis's desire, he consented to receive lay 
pupils for education according to the original intention of the institu- 
tion, and he consented also to oblige the ecclesiastical pupils to contri- 
bute in part towards the expense of their maintenance and education 
whilst at college. Both points I consider to be essential to palliate the 
mischiefs of this institution. For I fear that the utmost we can do will 
be to palliate its mischiefs, after the strange precipitance and want of 
forethought which has hitherto marked every stage of its progress. If 
the Irish priesthood is to be educated at a monastery at Maynooth, 
secluded from all intercourse with laymen, I cannot see what will be 
gained by reclaiming them from the foreign Popish universities. And 
if none but the lowest ranks in the community, who are unable to 
contribute to the expense of their maintenance and education, are re- 
ceived into the Irish College, I cannot see any one advantage which can 
result from it. And I can see that it will give a weight of patronage 
to some few Popish ecclesiastics, which they may use as a power- 
ful engine to annoy the State." — Grenville's Correspondence, vol. iii. pp. 
368-372. 



In the year 1899, the Irish Catholic hierarchy passed the 
following resolution: — 

"That, iu the appointment of the prelates of the Koman Catholic 
religion to vacant sees 'within the kingdom, such interference of 
Government as may enable it to be satisfied with the loyalty of the 
person appointed, is just, and ought to be agreed to." 

On the 4th of July 1812, O'Connell thus alludes to the 
Veto in one of his most masterly speeches : — 

" The opposition to Catholic Emancipation has assumed a new 
shape ; bigotry and intolerance have been put to the blush, or 
covered -with ridicule ; everybody laughs at Jack Giffard and Paddy 
Duignan ; and their worthy compeer and colleague in England, Sir 
William Scott, does no longer venture to meet, with adverse front, 
the justice of our cause. He may, indeed, talk of setting our 
question at rest ; he may declaim upon the moral inferiority of the 
Irish Catholics ; but let him rest assured that, so long as his children 
— if he has any — so long as the swarthy race of his Scotts are 
placed, by law, on any superiority to the Irish Catholics, so long 
will it be impossible to put the question to rest. It never can — it 
never shall — rest, 'save in unqualified, unconditional Emancipation. 
As to the moral inferiority, I shall not dispute the point with him ; 
but I trust no Catholic judge will ever be found in this country with 
such an accommodating disposition as to decide the precise same 
question in two different ways, as we are told that learned gentleman 
has done, with the question of ' paper blockades.' Let him, I am sure 
I consent, direct his sapient opposition, in his present prudent course 
of retarding the discussion of -the right and justice of our claims, by 
introducing other topics. The points of delay — the resting-places 
— are obvious ; and when the present are exhausted, I rely on the 
malignity of our oppressors to invent new terms for this purpose. 

" First, there was the Veto. That, indeed, was soon put down by 
the unanimous voice of the Catholic people, who, besides other 
reasons, really could not see, in the actual selection made by the 



: 



'>p 



Irish Government of persons to fill the offices belonging of right to 
them, anything to tempt them to confer on that Government the 
nomination of upwards of thirty other offices of emolument and 
honour. If hostility to the Irish people be a recognised recommen- 
dation to all other employments, is it likely that, in one alone, 
virtue and moral fitness should obtain the appointment ? It was 
too gross and glaring a presumption in an administration, avowing 
its abhorrence for everything Irish, to expect to be allowed to inter- 
fere with the religious discipline of the Irish Catholic Church. 

" Driven from any chance of the Veto, our enemies next sug- 
gested 'the arrangement,' as it was called; but this half measure 
had but few supporters. It was not sufficiently strong for the zealous 
iutolerants ; its advantages were not so obvious to the pronVate ■ it 
was met by this plain reply — that we knew of no real inconvenience 
that could possibly arise from the present system of the government 
of our Church ; but if any existed, it were fitter to be treated of by 
the venerable prelates of that Church, who understood the subject 
best, than by ministers who wish to turn everything into an engine 
of state policy. 

" ' The arrangement ' was then soon forgotten, and now, my lord, 
we have new terms stated — those are 'sanctions and securities.' 
We are now told we cannot be emancipated without ' sanctions and 
securities.' What are ' sanctions 1 ' They are calculated, I pre- 
sume, to do a great deal of mischief, because they are quite unintelli- 
gible. As to ' securities,' indeed I can understand that word ; and 
I am quite ready to admit that securities are necessary ; they are 
necessary against the effects upon a passive, but high-minded people 
— of continued insult and prolonged oppression. They are necessary 
in a sinking state against the domestic disturbances and organised 
disaffection which prevail in England — against the enormous and 
increasing power of the enemy — against dilapidated resources, ex- 
piring commerce, depreciated currency, and accumulating expendi- 
ture — against the folly, the incapacity, the want of character of the 
administration — against all those evils of which there is courage to 




speak — against that domestic insult, respecting which it is prudent 
to be silent — against all these, ' securities ' are necessary, and they 
are easy to be found ; they are to be found in conciliation and eman- 
cipation, their rectitude and justice. The brave, the generous, 
the enthusiastic people of Ireland are ready to place themselves in 
the breach that has been made in their country ; they claim the post 
of honour, that is, the post of utmost danger ; they are ready to secure 
the throne and the constitution, and all they require in return is, to 
be recognised as men and human beings in this their native land. . 

" Do not, then, I would say to any minister — do not presume to 
insult them, by attempting to treat them as maniacs, to be secured 
only by ropes and chains. Alas ! their only insanity is their devo- 
tion to you. Tell them not that the more they are free, the less will 
they be grateful ; tell them not that the less you have to fear from 
their discontent, the more strictly will you bind them. Oppress 
them if you please ; but hesitate before you deem it prudent thus to 
insult their first, their finest feelings." 

With that withering sarcasm of which he was especially 
a master, he attacked Mr Wellesley Pole, and the "classic" 
Castlereagh : — 

" Having disposed of ' Veto, arrangement, sanctions, and securi- 
ties,' there remains but one resource for intolerance : the classic 
Castlereagh has struck it out. It consists in — what do you think 1 
Why in ' hitches.' Yes, 'hitches ' is the elegant word which is now 
destined to protract our degradation. It is in vain that our advo- 
cates have increased ; in vain have our foes been converted ; in 
vain has William Wellesley Pole become our warm admirer. Oh, 
how beautiful he must have looked advocating the Catholic cause ! 
and his conversion, too, has been so satisfactory — he has accounted 
for it upon such philosophic principles. Yes, he has gravely in- 
formed us that he was all his life a man detesting committees ; you 
might see by him that the name of a committee discomposed his nerves, 
and excited his most irritable feelings ; at the sound of a committee 



WELLESLEY AXD CASTLEREAGE. 



he was roused to madness. Now, the Catholics had insisted upon 
acting by a committee; the naughty Papists had used nothing but pro- 
fane committees, and, of course, he proclaimed his hostility. But in 
proportion as he disliked committees, so did he love and approve of ag- 
gregate meetings — respectable aggregate meetings ! Had there been a 
chamber at the Castle large enough for an aggregate meeting, he would 
have given it. Who does not see that it is quite right to doat upon 
aggregate meetings and detest committees by law, logic, philosophy, 
and science of legislation ? All recommend the one and condemn the 
other ; and, at length, the Catholics have had the good sense to call 
their committee a board, to make their aggregate meetings more 
frequent. They, therefore, deserve Emancipation ; and, with the 
blessing of God, he (Mr Pole) would confer it on them ! (Laughter 
and cheers.) 

" But, seriously, let us recollect that Wellesley Pole is the brother 
of one of our most excellent friends — of Marquis Wellesley, who 
had so gloriously exerted himself in our cause — who had manfully 
abandoned one administration because he could not procure our 
liberty, and rejected power under any other, unless formed on the 
basis of Emancipation ; and who had, before this hour in which I 
speak, earned another unfading laurel, and the eternal affection of 
the Irish people, by his motion in the House of Lords. The 
eloquence and zeal and high character of that noble marquis, seemed 
all that was wanting to ensure, at no remote period, our success. He 
knows little of the Irish heart who imagines that his disinterested 
services will ever be forgotten ; no, they are graved on the soul of 
Irish gratitude, and will ever live in the memory of the finest people 
on the earth. Lord Castlereagh, too, has declared in our favour, 
with the prudent reserve of ' the hitches ; ' he is our friend, and 
has been so these last twenty years — our secret friend ; as he says 
so, upon his honour as a gentleman, we are bound to believe him. 
If it be a merit in the minister of a great nation to possess profound 
discretion, this merit Lord Castlereagh possesses in a supereminent 
degree. Why, he has preserved this secret with the utmost success. 







THE "hitches:' 



Who ever suspected that he had such a secret in his keeping 1 The 
•whole tenor of his life, every action of his, negatived the idea of his 
being our friend ; he spoke against us — he voted against us — he 
wrote and he published against us ; and it turns out now that he 
did all this merely to show how well he could keep a secret.. Oh, 
admirable contriver ! oh, most successful placeman! most discreet 
and confidential of ministers ! " 

He then proceeded to show what the " hitches " were: — 

" Our legal persecutors, who hunt us with a keenness only in- 
creased by their disappointment, and rendered more rancorous by 
our prospect of success — good aud godly men — are at this moment 
employed in projecting fresh scenes of prosecution. Every part of 
the press that has dared to be free will surely be punished, and 
public spirit and liberality will, in every case that can be reached by 
the arts of state persecution, expiate its offence in a prison. Be- 
lieve me, my prophetic fears are not vain : I know the managers 
well, and place no confidence in their holy seeming. Again England 
affords another opportunity of extending the ' hitches,' under the 
pretence of making laws to prevent rebellion there ; the adminis- 
tration will suspend the 'habeas corpus,' for the purpose of crushing 
emancipation here ; and thus will illustrate the contrast between the 
very words which it would require twelve simpletons to swear meant 
the same thing. The new laws occasioned by English rioters will pass 
harmless over their heads, and fall only upon you. It would be incon- 
sistent if Castlereagh, the worthy successor of Clare and John Foster, 
used any other plan towards Ireland. The ' hitches,' the ' hitches,' 
plainly mean all that can be raised of venal outcry against us, and all 
that can be enacted of arbitrary law, to prevent'our discussions. 

"Still, still we have resources — we have rich resources in those 
affectionate sentiments of toleration which our Irish Protestant 
brethren have proudly exhibited during the present year. The 
Irish Protestants will not abandon or neglect their own work ; it is 
they who have placed us on our present elevation — their support has 



m 



M 



rendered the common cause of our common country triumphant. 
Our oppressors, yielding an unwilling assent to the request of the 
Protestants of Ireland, may compensate themselves by abusing us 
in common; they may style us agitators — Mr Canning calls us 
agitators with ulterior views — but those Protestant agitators are the 
best friends to the security and peace of the country; and to us, 
Popish agitators, — for I own it, my lord, I am an agitator, and we 
solemnly promise to continue so, until the period of unqualified 
emancipation — until 'the simple repeal;' as to us, agitators 
amongst the Catholics, we are become too much accustomed to 
calumny to be terrified at it ; but how have we deserved reproach 
and obloquy? How have we merited calumny? Of myself, my 
lord, I shall say nothing — I possess no talents for the office ; but 
no man shall prevent the assertion of my rigid honesty. I am, it 
is true, the lowliest of the agitators, but there are, amongst them, 
men of first-rate talents, and of ample fortunes, men of the 
most ancient families and of hereditary worth, men of public spirit 
and of private virtue, and, above all, men of persevering, undaunted, 
and unextinguishable love of their country, of their poor, degraded, 
insulted country — to that country, will I say of all the agitators, 
with the exception of my humble self — 

" ' Boast, Erin, boast them tameless, frank, and free.' 

"Out of the hands of those agitators, however, the Government 
is desirable to take the people, and the Government is right. Out 
of the sphere of your influence, my lord, the people can never be 
taken, for reasons which, because you are present, I shall not men- 
tion, but which are recognised by the hearts of the Irish nation. 
(Loud cheering.) But out of our hands the people may easily be 
taken. They are bound to us only by the ties of mutual sympathies. 
We are the mere straws which are borne upon the torrent of public 
wrongs and public griefs. Restore their rights to the people, con- 
ciliate the Irish nation — which is ready to meet you more than half- 
way — and the power of the agitators is gone in an instant. I do 



U \1 



*.u 



certainly feel the alarm expressed at the agitation of the question 
of Catholic rights as a high compliment ; it clearly points out the 
course we ought to pursue. Let us rouse the Irish people, from 
one extreme to the other of the island, in this constitutional cause. 
Let the Catholic combine with the Protestant, and the Protestant 
with the Catholic, and one generous exertion sets every angry feeling 
at rest, and banishes, for ever, dissension and division. The tempta- 
tion to invasion will be taken away from the foreign enemy ; the 
pretext and the means of internal commotion will be snatched from 
the domestic foe ; our country, combined in one great phalanx, will 
defy every assault ; and we shall have the happiness of obtaining real 
security by that course of conciliation which deserves the appro- 
bation of every sound judgment, and must ensure the applause of 
every feeling heart, — we shall confer an honour on ourselves, and 
ensure the safety of our country." 

O'Connell has been called an " Agitator " in reproach ; 
we see here why he was an agitator on principle. Long 
before he began his career of public agitation, he showed 
the English Government how it could be prevented, or 
rather how it could be rendered unnecessary. " Restore 
their rights to the people, conciliate the Irish nation, which 
is ready to meet you more than half-way, and the power 
of the agitator is gone in an instant." Had O'Connell's 
advice been taken in the year 1812, we should not have 
heard of Fenianism in the year 1868. If England would 
not oblige the Irish nation to agitate, by making agitation 
virtually a necessary preliminary to any instalment of 
justice, there would be more peace at this side of the 
Channel, and not less prosperity at the other. 

In 1804 the Catholics met in Dublin to concert measures 



m 



GIVE ME JUSTICE. 



for obtaining the long-promised justice of Emancipation. 
They met in private at the house of Mr Ryan, and their 
proceedings were not made public, as the Habeas Corpus 
Act was in force. Another meeting was held in 1805, 
when Lord Fifzwilliam, Sir Thomas French, Sir Edward 
Bellew, Denis Scully, and R. R. Ryan, were appointed to 
present to Mr Pitt the petition to Parliament which they 
had agreed on. 

The petition was cautiously worded, with a terrible fear 
of giving oifence, since the Catholics were long accus- 
tomed to the assurance that either the matter or the manner 
was. in fault, if they desired to express their claims. It 
was O'Connell who first taught them a wiser and more 
manly way. He bid them ask for justice as justice. Until 
now, justice to a Catholic was taken to be a favour which 
might or might not be granted, or for which, if granted, 
the recipient should be perfectly grateful ; for which, if 
refused, he should meekly acquiesce. To refuse justice 
might seem unjust ; the refusal of a favour could not be 
looked on in the same light. 

Until now the Catholics had said, in trembling accents, 
I pray of you to grant me this favour, permit me to wor- 
ship my God accordiug to the dictates of my conscience, 
allow me to educate my children, grant me the ordinary 
rights of a citizen. 

But O'Connell thundered out, Give me justice, I ask 
no more — I shall not be satisfied with less. No wonder 




that those who were unwilling to do justice hated the 
man who demanded it. 

The Catholic had hitherto spoken in cautious language, 
with measured accent, in humble tones, and with words 
of deprecation. 

O'Connell flung his words hither and thither like a 
Norse giant playing with Scandinavian rocks. If they hit 
hard sometimes, it was because his aim was true. If the 
blows were rude, it was because he did not stop to select 
his missiles very carefully. If O'Connell had not been an 
Irishman, and had not been a Catholic, — if instead' of a 
little coarseness he had possessed a little Cromwellian 
brutality, — men like Carlyle would have flung him up into 
a niche of fame, would have honoured him as a hero, who 
not only hated shams, but demolished them. 

His was no one-sided love of justice. His was no 
affected cry to humour men who persecuted one class of 
their fellow-creatures, while they cried out for justice to 
another ; his justice was universal. No man has ever dared 
accuse O'Connell of intolerance, except to intolerant indi- 
viduals. No class was ever insulted by his eloquence ; no 
creed was ever vexed. He cried out alike for the slave in 
America, and the yet more cruelly treated serf in British 
India. If he demanded justice to Ireland, he also de- 
manded justice for all other peoples; and one of his most 
thrilling appeals to man to exercise, in his measure, this great 
attribute of God, was made at a meeting of the British 



I 






India Society, where Lord Brougham took the chair, and 
where O'Connell commenced his speech by exclaiming, " I 
am here to claim justice for India." 

The meetings of the Catholics in Dublin began to be 
regularly reported from the year 1808. On the 19th of 
January, they held a meeting for the purpose of submitting 
certain resolutions, as well as to consider the propriety of 
presenting a petition to the Imperial Parliament, praying 
the removal of the disabilities under which the body had 
so long and so patiently laboured. 

The Earl of Fingal was in the chair, and the proceed- 
ings were opened by Count Dalton, who, after alluding to 
the accidental absence of Lord Gormanstown, moved a 
resolution, expressing anxiety to petition Parliament for a 
repeal of the Penal Laws, and declaring that to be the 
" critical juncture when such a petition ought, without 
delay, to be transmitted." 

John Byrne, Esq., of Mullinahack, seconded the motion, 
and deprecated divisions amongst the Catholics. 

An amusing instance of the way in which Catholic 
divisions arose occurred now. Mr O'Connor, though 
"forcibly impressed" with the "propriety and necessity 
for petitioning," was nevertheless terribly afraid of doing 
it, and begged the meeting to wait until Providence should 
interfere in their behalf. He forgot that Providence helps 
those who help themselves. 

O'Connell replied — 



" Nothing but disunion among themselves could ever retard the 
Catholic cause. Division, while it rendered them the object of dis- 
gust to their friend, would make them the scorn and ridicule of 
their enemies. He was ready to admit that the present administra- 
tion were personal enemies of the Catholic cause ; yet if the Catho- 
lics continue loyal, firm, -and undivided, they had little to fear from 
the barren petulence of the ex-advocate, Perceval, or the frothy 
declamation of the poetaster, Canning. They might meet with equal 
contempt the upstart pride of Jenkiuson, and with more than 
contempt the pompous inanity of that Lord Castlereagh, who might 
well be permitted to hate the country that gave him birth, to her 
own annihilation. He was also free to confess that he knew of no 
statute passed since the Union which had for its object to increase 
the trade or advance the liberties of Ireland ; but he thought it 
impossible, if the Catholics persevered, with undivided efforts, in 
their loyal and dutiful pursuit of emancipation, that any admini- 
stration could be found sufficiently daring in guilt to stand between 
them and the throne of their father and sovereign, and most -calum- 
niously and falsely use his name to raise obstacles in the way of 
good subjects seeking to become free citizens. He did, therefore, 
conjure the gentlemen to give up their opposition ; he respected 
their talents, and however convinced of their mistake, could not 
doubt the purity of their motives. They must see that their argu- 
ments against the resolution were confined to the ridiculous opposi- 
tion, in fact, against the noble lord, for his having condescended to 
ask advice before he acted ; and to the equally frivolous difficulty 
objected to, the form of the notice for calling the meeting. Was it 
possible that rational beings should govern their conduct by such 
arguments in the serious pursuit of freedom"? They were sons, and 
might dearly love the parents who gave them birth — let them recol- 
lect that it was for their rights that the petition was framed : they 
were brothers, and should, if they felt the endearing impulses of 
fraternal affection, sacrifice party, and, of course, mere forms and 
ceremonies, in a struggle for obtaining the rights of their brethren : 



RESOLUTION TO PETITION. 



they were parents, and all the sweet charities of life combined in 
favour of the children who looked up to them for protection. It 
was the liberties of those children the present petition sought — 
would they postpone for an hour that sacred blessing 1 Could they, 
from any motive, thwart the progress of those who sought it 1 He 
knew that was impossible, and he hoped, therefore, there would be 
no division." 

The result was the withdrawal of the amendment, and 
the unanimous carrying of a resolution to petition. 

On the 23d February 1810, the following letter appeared 
in the Freeman'' s Journal : — 

" To the Editor of the ' Freeman's Journal.' 

" Sir, — I am directed by the Catholic Committee to inform you 
that the statement contained in a morning paper of this day, re- 
specting their proceedings, is extremely inaccurate and erroneous in 
many important particulars, more especially as far as relates to the 
Veto. That question was not fixed for discussion, nor was there 
any determination whatsoever on the subject. 

" I am also directed to request that you will publish this letter, 
as the committee consider that such statement, if uncontradicted, 
may be productive of mischief. — I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
" Daniel O'Connell, Acting Sec. 

" Crow Street, February 22, 1810." 

On the 4th May 1810, there was a meeting of the 
Dublin Corporation, to arrange for a general meeting on a 
large scale, the object being to petition for the Repeal oi 
the Union. 

The social effects of that measure were beginning to be 
deeply felt. Trade was failing, shops were closing, the 
once busy streets were almost deserted. There was no 

T 




290 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF THE UNION. 






g>> 



business done in Westmoreland Street, and there were 
no " fashionables " promenading in Grafton Street. How 
could there be, when fashion had fled to the seat of fashion, 
and trade had failed, because there was no capital to sup- 
port it, and no aristocracy to encourage it ? 2 

The statement that " four-fifths of the legislature knew 
very little of the country except by misrepresentation," 
was only too true ; and, unfortunately, any attempt to 
remove this ignorance was useless. 

The Common Council resolved on a petition, in which 

2 The following extract from the speech made by Mr "Willis fill up 
the melancholy details : — " Mr Willis said he rose under much difficulty, 
from the insidious and malignant attacks on his character which the 
House had just listened to. He hoped it would not prejudice them 
against the motion he would now submit to them on the measure of the 
Union — a motion so interesting to every Irishman, that it stood in need 
of little apology. He had no doubt but Ur Whitelaw's pamphlet would 
be again introduced, to show the prosperity of this city ; but he would 
oppose to that the general and overwhelming bankruptcy with which 
this unfortunate country was inundated. He asked why Westmoreland 
Street, Grafton Street, and every other trading part of this city, exhi- 
bited such distress — why so many houses and shops were shut ? It is 
because the men of property, the fashion of the country, were inveigled 
away by this measure to spend their property in another land. He 
considered a union of the Government absolutely necessary to support 
our glorious constitution, and the connection between the sister islands, 
to render the executive strong and powerful, to enable it to bring into 
action the whole strength of the empire ; but a union of legislatures he 
considered in a very different point of view. A non-resident legislature, 
four-fifths of which knew little of this ill-fated country but by misre- 
presentation, be they ever so well inclined to serve us, are liable to im- 
position, practised by interested or designing men. This had been the case 
in the Coal Act, the Paving Act, the Insurrection Act, and many others." 



m 



a 

■ 






% 



[hi 



they declared that the Union " had not increased their 
prosperity, comfort, or happiness," — and stated, which 
could not he contradicted, that Ireland had " suffered 
extremely in trade and commerce," which was patent to 
all; and, moreover, that Ireland had not improved in 
" civilisation " or " manners," from intercourse with Eng- 
land, neither had the " discord of religious sects heen 
extinguished." 

The petitioners asked, as Irishmen will ask and con- 
tinue to ask, for equal laws, for the administration of 
justice, which should be justice. They might as well have 
addressed themselves to the North "Wind. 

" Mr M'Kenzie said he was oblir/ed, being instructed by his cor- 
poration, to vote for a petition. He conceived his instructions did 
not go to support such a petition as the one now read ; the language 
was improper — it could not be otherwise, coming as it did." 

Mr Paterson thought the petition " presumptuous," 
and Mr Craven said the Catholics, without whom the 
Union would never have been carried, were " duped." 
There is not the slightest doubt that the Union would 
have been carried without the Catholics, at the cost of 
another rebellion; but the promoters of the plan of Union 
preferred carrying it quietly, so they duped the Catholics, 
which was easier, if less honourable. 

On the 8th August 1810, 3 the grand jurors of the city, 

3 See files of the Freeman's Journal for the year 1810. 



, 1 

V" I 



$4 






292 



TEE NATION AXE REPEAL. 



" viewing the distressed and deplorable state " of the 
Dublin manufactures, and the " great gloom and misery " 
of their " unfortunate " country, requested the high 
sheriffs to call a meeting to petition for a Repeal of 
the Union. This requisition was signed by 150 jurymen. 
A meeting was held at the Royal Exchange on the 18th 
September 1810, and Sir James Riddell, the High Sheriff, 
took the chair. The middle upper class were all eager 
for Repeal of the Union ; the upper class lived principally 
in England, and so that they got their rents, did not 
trouble themselves about the state of the country. If 
an agitation was threatened, or a tythe-proctor carded, 
they called out for, martial law; they knew nothing of, 
and cared nothing for, the unhappy people whose last 
farthing was wrung from them before they attempted to 
avenge themselves. 

It has been generally believed, or taken as an accepted 
fact, that Irishmen acquiesced generally in the Union, 
that the agitation in O'Couuell's later years, and at 
the present day, for repeal, or a federal government, is 
the work of a few designing jioliticians. This opinion or 
belief is one of the many evil results of English ignorance 
of Irish history. It is true that, for a year or so after the 
passing of the Union, Ireland lay as one stunned by a 
heavy and unexpected blow ; but she soon recovered herself, 
and her first act was, to protest both against the blow and 
the manner in which the blow was given. A glance over the 



files of Irish newspapers, from the year 1S08 to the present 
day, will give ample evidence of the truth of this assertion. 4 

We shall give a few extracts from the speeches at this 
aggregate meeting as an evidence of the public opinion of 
the day. 

Mr Hutton, who moved the first motion, said : — 

" Sir, We have now had the experience of ten years, since the 
passing of the Act of Union, and let me ask, had the Irish manu- 
factures had a fair competition in the British markets ? Have the 
manufactures of Ireland been protected and encouraged, or have 
those of Dublin flourished, as we were promised 1 Let me ask, have 
the poor of the land had their education properly attended to ? 
Every man that is a well-wisher to the prosperity of Ireland will 
answer me in the negative. Have the Konian Catholics met with 
any acknowledgment of the justice of their claims ? If they have, 
let any man who now hears me stand forward and avow it. On 
the contrary, the Catholics, in their rights, ever since the passing of 



A 



4 The following extract from the Dublin Evening Post of 26th March 
1808, is an evidence of the opinion advanced above : — 

" Repeal op the Union. — The corporation of skinners and glovers 
have the honour of being the first to come forward to express their 
sentiments on the policy and necessity which exists for a Repeal of the 
Act of Union. These worthy and spirited citizens met yesterday, when 
they entered into resolutions which will be found in another column. 
Other corporations are preparing to follow up with spirit the example of 
the skinners and glovers. They will not be deterred by the assertion 
that the effort is useless. They recollect, that although it was proposed 
in the Irish House of Commons, that the petition from Eelfast fur the 
repeal of Poyning's law should be burned by the hangman in College 
Green, yet, in less than seven years after, the law was repealed : they 
will also recollect that Lucas was exiled for supporting those principles, 
which afterwards procured Grattan the thanks of his country, and a 
vote of fifty thousand pounds." 



1 

H 

',.■. 



m 



the Act of Union, have stood, and do stand at present, just where 
the) began. They have endeavoured to get their claims acknow- 
ledged and acquiesced in ; but are they not at this instant precluded 
from holding any superior rank in the army? I do not, sir, speak 
of administration, but I contend that the welfare and prosperity of 
Ireland depend upon the Repeal of the Act of Union." 

Mr O'Connell said — 

"The Union was, therefore, a manifest injustice — and it con- 
tinues to be unjust to this day; it was a crime, and must be still 
criminal, unless it shall be ludicrously pretended that crime, like 
wine, improves by old age, and that time mollifies injustice into 
innocence. 



A 



" Alas ! England, that ought to have been to us as a sister and a 
friend — England, whom we had loved, and fought and bled for — 
England, whom we have protected, and whom we do protect — 
England, at a period, when out of 100,000 of the seamen in her 
service, 70,000 were Irish — England stole upon us like a thief in 
the niuht, and robbed us of the precious gem of our Liberty; she 
stole from us ' that in which nought enriched her, but made us poor 
indeed.' Reflect, then, my friends, oh the means employed to ac- 
complish this disastrous measure. I do not speak of the meaner 
instruments of bribery and corruption — we all know that everything 
was put to sale — nothing profane or sacred was omitted in the 
Union mart — offices in the revenue, commands in the army and 
navy, the sacred ermine of justice, and the holy altars of God were 
all profaned and polluted as the rewards of Union services. By a 
vote in favour of the Union, ignorance, incapacity, and profligacy 
obtained certain promotion— and our ill-fated but beloved country 
was degraded to her utmost limits, before she was transfixed in 
slavery, But I do not intend to detain you in the contemplation 
of those vulgar means of parliamentary success — they are within the 
daily routine of official management : neither will I direct your at- 
tention to the frightful recollection of that avowed fact, which is 



now part of history, that the Rebellion itself was fomented and en- 
couraged, in order to facilitate the Union. Even the Rebellion was 
an accidental and a secondary cause — the real cause of the Union 
lay deeper, but it is quite obvious. It is to be Sound at once in the 
religion* dissensions which the enemies of Ireland have created, and 
continued, and seek to perpetuate amongst ourselves, by telling us 
of, and separating us into, wretched sections and miserable subdi- 
visions ; they separated the Protestant from the Catholic, and the 
Presbyterian from both ; they revived every antiquated cause of 
domestic animosity, and they invented new pretexts of rancour; but 
above all, my countrymen, they belied and calumniated us to each 
other — they falsely declared that we hated each other, and they 
continued to repeat the assertion, until we came to believe it ; they 
succeeded in producing all the madness of party and religious dis- 
tinctions ; and whilst we were lost in the stupor of insanity, they 
plundered us of our country, and left us to recover at our leisure 
from the horrid delusion into which we had been so artfully con- 
ducted. 

" Such, then, were the means by which the Union was effectu- 
ated. It has stript us of commerce and wealth ; it has degraded us, 
and deprived us not only of our station as a nation, but even of the 
name of our country ; we are governed by foreigners — foreigners 
make our laws, for were the one hundred members who nominally 
represent Ireland in what is called the Imperial Parliament, were 
they really our representatives, what influence could they, although 
unbought and unanimous, have over the five hundred and fifty-eight 
English and Scotch members t But what is the fact % Why, that 
out of the one hundred, such as they are, that sit for this country, 
more than one-fifth know nothing of us, and are unknown to us. 
What, for example, do we know about Andrew Strahan, printer to 
the king 1 What can Henry Martin, barrister-at-law, care fur the 
rights or liberties of Irishmen 1 Some of us may, perhaps, for our 
misfortunes, have been compelled to read a verbose pamphlet of 
James Stevens ; but who knows anything of one Crile, one 



Hughan, one Caokin, or of a dozen more whose names I could men- 
tion, only because I have discovered them for the purpose of speak- 
ing to you about them ; what sympathy can we, in our sufferings, 
expect from those men 1 What solicitude for our interests 1 What 
are they to Ireland, or Ireland to them ? No, Mr Sheriff, we 
are not represented — we have no effectual share in the legislation — 
the thing is a mere mockery ; neither is the Imperial Parliament 
competent to legislate for us — it is too unwieldy a machine to legis- 
late with discernment for England alone ; but with respect to Ire- 
land, it has all the additional inconvenience that arise from want of 
interest and total ignorance. Sir, when I talk of the utter ignorance, 
in Irish affairs, of the members of the Imperial Parliament, I do not 
exaggerate or mistake ; the ministers themselves are in absolute 
darkness with respect to this country. I undertake to demonstrate 
it. Sir, they have presumed to speak of the growing prosperity of 
Ireland. I know them to be vile and profligate — I cannot be sus- 
pected of flattering them — yet, vile as they are, I do not believe 
they could have, had the audacity to insert in the speech, supposed 
to be spoken by his Majesty, that expression, had they known that, 
in fact, Ireland was in abject and increasing poverty." 



Then lie appealed to his audience on the subject of reli- 
gious intolerance, a subject which he lost no opportunity of 
bringing forward : — 

"Who, in 1795, thought a Union possible? Pitt dared to at- 
tempt it, and he succeeded ; it only requires the resolution to 
attempt its repeal; in fact, it requires only to entertain the hope of 
repealing it, to make it impossible that the Union shcwld continue ; 
but that pleasing hope could never exist whilst the infernal dissen- 
sions on the score of religion were kept up. The Protestant alone 
could not expect to liberate his country, the Roman Catholic alone 
could not do it, neither could the Presbyterian ; but amalgamate the 
three into the Irishman, and the Union is repealed. Learn discre- 
tion from your enemies; they have crushed your country by foment- 



ing religious discord ; serve her, by abandoning it for ever. Let 
each man give up his share of the mischief, let each man forsake 
every feeling of rancour. But, I say not this to barter with you, 
my countrymen ; I require no equivalent from you ; whatever course 
you shall take, my mind is fixed ; I trample underfoot the Catholic 
claims, if they can interfere with the repeal ; I abandon all wish for 
emancipation, if it delays that repeal. Nay ; were Mr Perceval, to- 
morrow, to offer me the Repeal of the Union upon the terms of 
re-enacting the entire penal code, I declare it from my heart, and 
in the presence of my God, that I would most cheerfully embrace 
his offer. Let us then, my beloved countrymen, sacrifice our wicked 
and groundless animosities on the altar of our country ■ let that 
spirit which, heretofore emanating from Dungannon, spread all over 
the island, and gave light and liberty to the land, be again cherished 
amongst us ; let us rally round the standard of Old Ireland, and 
we shall easily procure that greatest of political blessings— an Irish 
King, an Irish House of Lords, and an Irish House of Commons." 

The close of O'Connell's speech was greeted by long and 
continued applause, but the High Sheriff was nervous. 
O'Connell had used the words " Irish King," and no one 
could tell what construction might be put on the expression ; 
therefore, O'Connell was obliged to explain himself, and to 
make a special declaration of loyalty. 

A declaration and a petition were drawn up this year. 
The declaration was on the vexed subject of the Veto, the 
petition was for Repeal. 

O'Connell drew up the petition, which ran thus — 
" To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of 
Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, 

" We, whose names are hereunto subscribed, on behalf of our- 
selves and of others, his Majesty's subjects professing the Roman 



Catholic religion in Ireland, humbly beg leave to represent to this 
honourable House — 

"That we, your petitioners, did, in the years 1805 and 1808, 
humbly petition this honourable House, praying the total abolition 
of the penal laws, which aggrieve the Catholics of Ireland. 

"We now feel ourselves obliged, in justice to ourselves, our 
families, and our country, once more to solicit the attention of this 
honourable House to the subject of our said petition. 

" We state, that the Roman Catholics constitute the most numer- 
ous and increasing portion of the inhabitants of Ireland, comprising 
an immense majority of the manufacturing, trading, and agricul- 
tural interests, and amounting to, at least, four-fifths of the Irish 
population ; that they contribute largely to the exigencies of their 
country, civil and military ; that they pay the far greater part of 
the public and local taxes ; that they supply the armies and navies 
of this empire with upwards of one-third part in number of the 
soldiers and sailors employed in the public service ; and that, not- 
withstanding heavy discouragements, they form the principal con- 
stituent part of the strength, wealth, and industry of Irelaud. 

" Yet such is the grievous operation of the penal laws of which 
we complain, that the Roman Catholics are thereby not only set 
apart from their fellow-subjects as aliens in their native land, but 
are ignominiously and rigorously proscribed from almost all situa- 
tions of public trust, honour, or emolument, including every public 
function and department, from the Houses of legislature down to 
the most petty corporations. 

" We state, that whenever the labour of public duty is to be ex- 
acted and enforced, the Catholic is sought out and selected ; where 
honours or rewards are to be dispensed, he is neglected and con- 
temned. 

" Where the military and naval strength of the empire is to be 
recruited, the Catholics are eagerly solicited, nay compelled, to bear 
at least their full share in the perils of warfare, and in the lowest 
ranks ; but when preferment or promotion (the dear and legitimate 



m 

m 

I 



"- 



" f-]l'l 



PETITION FOR REPEAL. 






13 

: 



prize of successful valour) are to be distributed as rewards of merit, 
no laurels are destined to grace a Catholic's brow, or fit the wearer 
for command. 

"We state, thus generally, the grievous condition of the Roman Ca- 
tholics of Ireland, occasioned solely by the fatal influence and opera- 
tion of the penal laws ; and though we forbear to enter into greater 
detail, yet we do not the less trust to the influence of reason and justice 
(which eventually must prevail) for effecting a full and deliberate 
inquiry into our grievances, and accomplishing our effectual relief. 

" We do beg leave, however, most solemnly, to press upon the 
attention of this honourable House, the imminent public dangers 
which necessarily result from so inverted an order of things, and so 
vicious and unnatural a system of legislation — a system which has 
long been the reproach of this nation, and is unparalleled throughout 
modern Christendom. 

" And we state it as our fixed opinion, that, to restore to the 
Catholics of Ireland a full, equal, and unqualified participation of 
the benefits of the laws and constitution of England, and to with- 
draw all the privations, restrictions, and vexatious distinctions 
which oppress, injure, and afflict them in their country, is now 
become a measure not merely expedient, but absolutely necessary — 
not only a debt of right due to a complaining people, but perhaps 
the last remaining resource of this empire, in the preservation of 
which we take so deep an interest. 

" We therefore pray this honourable House to take into their 
most serious consideration the nature, extent, and operation of the 
aforesaid penal laws, and, by repealing the same altogether, to re- 
store to the Roman Catholics of Ireland those liberties so long with- 
held, and their due share in that Constitution, which they, in 
common with their fellow-subjects of every other description, contri- 
bute by taxes, arms, and industry, to sustain and defend. 

" And your petitioners will ever pray." 

On the 24th of February 1810, the Catholic bishops met 
in Dublin, and drew up the following resolutions : — 



" Eesolved — ' That it is the undoubted and exclusive right of 
Roman Catholic bishops to discuss and decide on all matters 
appertaining to the doctrine and discipline of the Roman Catholic 
Church.' 

" Resolved — ' That we do hereby confirm and declare our un- 
altered adherence to the resolutions unanimously entered into at our 
last general meeting, on the 14th September 1806.' 

'' Resolved — ' That we are convinced that the oath of allegiance 
framed and proposed by the legislature itself, and taken by us, is 
not only adequate security for our loyalty, but that we know of no 
stronger pledge that we can possibly give.' 

" Resolved — ' That having disclaimed upon oath all right in the 
Pope, or any other foreign potentate, to interfere in the temporal con- 
cerns ..f the kingdom, an adherence to the practice observed in the 
appointment of Irish Roman Catholic bishops cannot tend to produce 
an undue or mischievous exercise of any foreign influence whatsoever. 

" Resolved — 'That we neither seek nor desire any other earthly 
consideration for our spiritual ministry to our respective flocks, save 
what they may, from a sense of religion and duty, voluntarily 
afford us.' 

" Resolved — ' That an address, explanatory of these our senti- 
ments, be prepared and directed to the Roman Catholic clergy and 
laity of Ireland, and conveying such further instruction as existing 
circumstances may seem to require.' " 6 



6 As the Veto question is only mentioned incidentally in O'Connell's 
history, we shall not enter into this subject. It is one which would 
merit careful consideration, but such consideration would require more 
space than can be given to it in the present work. 

It is sufficient to observe that, though a few of the Irish bishops were 
at first disposed to favour it, they opposed it eventually with a steady 
resolution, which saved the Catholic Church in this country, and in 
( ireal Britain, from a danger which was not the less to be apprehended 
because it was deeply insidious. Dr Lanigan, the great Irish ecclesi- 
astical historian, was one of the most energetic and successful opposers 
of this scheme. 



The Irish Catholic hierarchy, with a trusting confidence 
which was honourahle to them, however misplaced, had long 
believed that to protest and solemnly declare their loyalty 
would insure a belief in it, They had at last begun to 
learn that men who did not believe their word would be 
equally unwilling to believe their oath. They had learned 
that a dignified statement of loyalty, or of their intentions, 
was the best policy. They began to see that all these 
demands for securities were mere excuses, the excuses of 
those who wished to evade granting justice; first by asking 
securities against dangers which existed only in their own 
imagination, then by refusing the securities, no matter what 
solemn pledges might be made of their authenticity. 

That the one object of the Veto was to wean the Catholic 
clergy from the Holy See, is plainly evident from the 
private correspondence of the times. The great complaint 
against the Irish priesthood was its devotion to Rome. 
The Veto was to undermine their loyalty, and was to secure 
devotion to English interests as. a substitution for devotion 
to the chair of Peter. Of course, something should be 
offered in return, and Emancipation was proposed. Jr is to 
be feared that, if the Veto had been agreed upon, Emanci- 
pation would have been refused. 6 

The Protestant Bishop of Meath wrote on this subject to 



8 The English Government, who had the nomination of the bishops 
for the Protestant Church in Ireland, took care that their nominees 
should be all English, 




Lord Castlereagh in November 1800. A few extracts from 
this letter will show the objects avowedly contemplated : — 

" First, The Catholic clergy were to be made more independent of 
the people, and the bishops were to be brought into contact with the 
Government. — 'So early as the year 1782, 1 entertained the idea of 
the policy and necessity of making an established provision for the 
Roman Catholic clergy, that would make them independent of their 
people. I necessarily connected this measure with that of bringing 
their bishops more in contact with the Government, and giving the 
Castle an interference and influence in their appointment.' 

" Secondly, Care was to be taken, and a plan arranged, with what 
would have been called Jesuitical skill and duplicity, and the 
plan emanated from a Catholic bishop, that the priest should be so 
educated as to be made as English as possible, not only in politics 
but in religion — ' In France, Spain, and the Low Countries, the 
superiors of the different seminaries for the English, Scotch, and 
Irish Missions, as they expressed it, were always natives of those 
kingdoms ; but they were persons exactly of the description which 
Government must ever consider as disqualified for such situations 
— persons exclusively devoted to the See of Rome, educated in all 
the principles, and therefore certain to inculcate and teach all 
the principles, that militate most against the civil authority in every 
country, and particularly tainted with all the prejudices against our 
establishment and our constitution, which an education in countries 
hostile to both cannot fail to inspire.' 

" Thirdly, No priest was to be allowed to officiate in Ireland 
unless he was educated at Maynooth under Government control 
and supervision ; for those educated in foreign seminaries would 
be more Roman, and the ' foreign priest would not fail to reproach 
the Maynooth priest as half a heretic, as a Government instead of 
a Roman priest ! ' 7 

" Fourthly, The doctrines taught at Maynooth were to be such as 



n 
§ 



Castlereagh Correspondence, voL iii. 






A SIGNIFICANT PARALLEL. 



the English Government shall approve. The legislators of the day 
were quite indifferent to points of doctrine ; the Protestant parson or 
the Catholic priest might teach what they pleased on such subjects; 
but Caesar's interests were to be looked after very carefully. They 
were ordered to be the first object ; for the rest it mattered little." 

The Protestant Bishop of Meath had very distinct and 
very practical ideas on this subject. He was by no means 
unjust or unfair to the Catholic clergy; he would allow them 
to teach what they pleased, so long as they taught submis- 
sion to the Government. He seems to have been an honest, 
honourable man with one idea. Why could not these men 
do as he did? — why could not these men teach as he taught? 
The king or Government, as the case might be, was the 
head of his Church, and the ultimate source of his doctrine. 
Those men who would not act as he did, were either stupid 
or perverse, in which case he pitied them ; but he was be- 
yond his age in liberality, and he would not persecute or 
suggest persecution. 8 



8 " Great precautions should be taken against any doctrines beinc 
taught in the College that might militate against or undermine the 
establishment, or the constitution and government of the country." 

The doctrine taught by the Catholic clergy did not concern the Pro- 
testant bishop, except in so far as it interfered with what he considered 
"loyalty." The whole letter, mutatis mutandis, is curiously like a 
charge given by the Bishop of Ely on the 20th July 1872, on the Bennett 
judgment, in which he says, " that the ( Protestant) Church allows a fair 
liberty of prophesying, but that ritual and ceremonial must be ' some- 
what exact.' " In fact, so long as there was an attempt at exterior con- 
formity, their interior conformity mattered very little. , It is curious to 
observe the similarity of opinion, or shall we say indifference to " doc- 
trine," between the bishop of 1800 and the bishop of 1872. 




On the 5th January 1811, a meeting was held for the 
purpose of " appointing proper persons in aid of the Earl 
of Fingal, for the charge of the petition to England." 

O'Connell, practical as usual, informed the committee 
that considerable progress had been made in the investiga- 
tion of the existing penal laws, and the oppressive conse- 
quences resulting therefrom. As the statement occupied 
nearly three hundred folio pages, it would not, from its 
voluminous nature, be perfectly ready for their inspection 
before Saturday next. Notice would then be given to have 
it printed, in order to place it in the hands of the members 
of both Houses ; and it would be a subject of consideration 
with the committee, whether the statement should be 
confined to the members of Parliament alone, or obtain a 
more general publicity. He had no hesitation in saying that. 
in his opinion, the preferable mode would be to have it 
published in the usual manner, in order that the people of 
the United Kingdom might be enabled to entertain no 
doubt whatever on the subject ; for it has been said that 
the people suffer not from any actual or positive oppres- 
sion, but because they are told so. He had no difficulty in 
saying that this was an evil they ought to encounter, and 
the importance of informing every person in England of 
the real condition of the Catholics, should supersede any 
fastidious notions of delicacy or forbearance. 

O'Connell was always anxious for publicity; he had no 
idea of concealment, and certainly was far beyond his age 



in his policy. Hitherto concealment had been necessary, 
and cautious language had been advisable. It needed a 
man like the Liberator to break down the barriers which 
were no longer necessary, but which were preserved, or at- 
tempted to be preserved, by those who thought more of their 
own safety than the public good. 

It was at this period that O'Connell made a speech in 
which he spoke freely of English ignorance of Irish affairs. 
Speaking of the writers in the Edinburgh Review, he 
said : — 



" I differ from them on the subject of the Veto, and would 
undertake to convince any of them that I am right. I also easily 
see myself amongst those whom they style ' bombastic counsellors,' 
and I smile to see how happily they have described that fustian and 
rant, which I am in the habit, as at present, of obtruding upon 
your meetings. But, notwithstanding this attack, which I admit to 
be personal, I do most sincerely and cordially thank them for their 
exertions. It is not in the nature of popular feeling to continue 
long its gratitude ; but I have no hesitation in saying, that the 
Catholics of Ireland deserve to be slaves, if they ever forget what 
they owe to the writers of that article. Let me, however, repeat 
my regret, that its effects should have been weakened by tie erro- 
neous view which those writers took of our situation. It is strange 
enough, that when they contributed so considerably to the repeal of 
the slave trade, they were found to be perfectly conversant with the 
savage tribes of Raarta and Bambana ; and that they were able to 
give dissertations on the police of the barbaric cities of Sego and 
Timbuctoo, and yet are so deplorably ignorant of the condition of 
the white slaves of Ireland. We have another excellent advocate in 
England— an advocate whom we could bribe only one way, with the 
justice of our cause— I mean William Cobbett. It is truly impor- 

U 



0' CONN ELL'S FEARLESS HONESTY. 



taut to us that his exertions should not be paralysed by ignorance 
of our wants. The moment we can show him the extent of our 
oppressions, we furnish him with materials to ensure our triumph — 
and it must be admitted that we could not have a more useful advo- 
cate. When he is right, he is irresistible ; there is a strength and 
clearness in the way he puts every topic ; he is at once so convinc- 
ing, and yet so familiar, that the dullest can understand, and even 
the bigot must be convinced. But what has deservedly raised him 
high in public estimation is the manly candour with which he avows 
and retracts any opinion that he discovers to be erroneous." 

Perhaps the characteristic we should most admire at 
this period of O'GonneH's career, was his uncompromising 
honesty. He knew the faults of his countrymen, he was 
far too keen-sighted not to see them ; but many a man, both 
before his time and since, has seen them, and has not dared 
to denounce them. Disunion, the curse of Ireland and of 
Irish politics, threatened the extinction of the Catholic 
body, when it was working successfully ; and O'Connell, at 
the risk of his rising prosperity, set himself not only to 
make peace, but to denounce this fatal error. 

" The old curse of the Catholics is, I fear, about to be renewed ; 
division, that made us what we are and keeps us so, is again to 
rear its standard amongst us; but it was thus always with the Irish 
Catholics. I recollect that in reading the life of the great Duke of 
Ormond, as he is called, I was forcibly struck with a despatch of 
his, transmitted about the year 1661, when he was Lord-Lieutenant 
of Ireland. It was written to vindicate himself from a charge of 
having favoured the Papists, and having given them permission to 
hold a public meeting in Dublin. His answer is remarkable. He 
rejects with disdain the foul calumny of being a favourer of Papists, 
though he admits he gave them leave to meet : ' because,' said he, 



"Mr GREAT LIFT IN POPULARITY." 



m 



' I know by experience, that the Irish Papists never meet without 
dividing and degrading themselves.' I quote the words of the 
official despatch ; I can lay my finger on the very spot in ' Carte's 
Life of Ormond.'" 

" One hundred and fifty years have since elapsed, and we are 
still in thraldom, because no experience can, I fear, cure us of this 
wretched disposition to divide. He entreated of the respectable 
gentlemen who that day attended the committee, to consider that 
their mistakes, if they had made any, ought not to be visited with so 
grievous a calamity as that of creating dissension amongst them." 

The truth was, that the Government were beginning to 
bribe the upper class of Catholics who were members of 
the Association, and it is said that some of those gentle- 
men had been tampered with seriously. 

O'Connell himself dated his position as leader of the 
Catholic party from the year 1810. When speaking of 
this subject to Mr Daunt, he said — 

" In 1810, the corporation of Dublin met at the Ro}'al Exchange 
to petition for the Repeal of the Union. John Keogh attended the 
meeting and made a speech. I also spoke in support of the Repeal, 
and thenceforth do I date my great lift in popularity. Keogh saw 
that I was calculated to become a leader. He subsequently tried to 
impress me with his own policy respecting Catholic affairs. The 
course he then recommended was a sullen quiescence ; he urged that 
the Catholics should abstain altogether from agitation, and he 
laboured hard to bring me to adopt his views. But I saw that 
agitation was our only available weapon ; I saw that incessantly 
keeping our demands and our grievances before the public and the 
Government, we must sooner or later succeed. Moreover, that 
period above all others was not one at which our legitimate weapon, 
agitation, could have prudently been let to rust. It was during the 
war, and while Napoleon — that splendid madman — made the 



Catholics of Ireland so essential to the military defence of the 
empire ; the time seemed peculiarly appropriate to press our claims. 
About that period a great Catholic meeting was held. John Keogh 
was then old and infirm ; but his presence was eagerly desired, and 
the meeting awaited his arrival with patient good humour. I and 
another were deputed to request his attendance. John Keogh had 
this peculiarity — that when he was waited on about matters of 
business, he would talk away on all sorts of subjects except the busi- 
ness which had brought his visitors ; accordingly, he talked a great 
deal about everything but Catholic politics for the greater portion 
of our visit; and when at length we pressed him to accompany us 
to the meeting, the worthy old man harangued us for a quarter of 
an hour to demonstrate the impolicy of publicly assembling at all, 
and ended by coming to the meeting. He drew up a resolution 
which denounced the continued agitation of the Catholic question at 
that time. This resolution, proceeding as it did from a tried old 
leader, was carried. I then rose and proposed a counter resolution, 
pledging us all to incessant, unrelaxing agitation ; and such were 
the wiseacres with whom I had to deal, that they passed my reso- 
lution in the midst of enthusiastic acclamations, without once dream- 
ing that it ran directly counter to John Keogh's ! Thenceforward, I 
may say, I was the leader. Keogh called at my house some short 
time after ; he paid me many compliments, and repeated his im- 
portunities that I might alter my policy. But I was inexorable ; 
my course was resolved upon and taken. I refused to yield. He 
departed in bad humour, and I never saw him afterwards. 

" Keogh was undoubtedly useful in his day. But he was one 
who would rather that the cause should fail, than that anybody 
but himself should have the honour of carrying it. 

"He and his coadjutors made a mistake in 1793. He was a 
member of a deputation, consisting altogether of five persons, who 
had an interview with Pitt and Dundas on the subject of the 
Catholic claims. Pitt asked, 'What would satisfy the Catholics?' 
Keogh replied, ' Equality.' Pitt seemed inclined to comply with 



mm. 




|HE Orange Lodges had never 

ceased their activity since the 

Rebellion of 1798, and some 

members of these lodges were guilty 

of acts of singular cruelty. 

O'Connell took care to make those 
outrages public, and certainly the conduct of 
6ome individuals connected with this body was a 
disgrace to humanity. Harmless and innocent 
children, helpless and infirm women, were but 
too frequently the objects of their wicked ven- 
geance. On the 12th of July 1808, they shot down 
a poor idiot, known as Jack of the Roads, who had 



torn 



' ] M 




OR A NO E OUTRAGES. 



made a bet that he would run from Dublin to Limerick, 
keeping pace with the mail. The bet was fourpence and 
a pint of porter. As he passed through Mountrath on his 
return, he was foolish enough to flourish a green bough at 
a party of Orangemen. One of them fired at his face ; his 
eyes were destroyed, and they left him to die in torment by 
the road side. 

In Dublin they attacked some poor people, who had 
made a bonfire and danced round St Kevin's fountain 
with garlands, and shot them down like dogs. At Newry, 
eighteen men crept round a party who were enjoying 
themselves on the eve of St John the Baptist by lighting 
bonfires, and shot them down in cold blood. All this 
passed unpunished; but if Catholics had been the guilty 
individuals, there would have been a cry from one end of 
England to the other for vengeance. 

But this was not all. At the very time when Irish sol- 
diers were dying by hundreds for the defence of England, 
when the peninsula of Spain was reeking with their life- 
blood, they were not only refused the consolations of their 
religion, but were cruelly punished if they even dared 
to ask for them. It was no wonder that they should have 
little love of the upper classes of their Catholic fellow- 
countrymen, who, content with their own spiritual advan- 
tages, troubled themselves but little for those whose souls 
were equally precious in the sight of their Creator. It was 
no wonder that these poor men looked np with all tha 



jgj 

m 



fj 






INTOLERANCE IN TEE ARMY. 



reverence of their being to the man who stood up boldly to 
proclaim their rights, to ask why they should be excepted 
from the benefits of such religious liberty as the Govern- 
ment of the day permitted. 9 

On the 1st December 1810, O'Connell brought tliia sub- 
ject before the Catholic committee. We quote his speech 
from the files of the Dublin Evening Post of that date : — 

" Sir, I rise in pursuance of the notice which I gave at our last 
meeting, for the purpose of stating such information as I have 
received, respecting the illegal persecution of an Irish Catholic 
soldier of the militia. And, sir, in my humble judgment, we should 
be guilty of a dereliction of duty to our fellow-countrymen, if we 
suffered the perpetrators of the offence, which I am about to state, 
to go unpunished. 

" I conceive we are called on by every social feeling as Catholics 
and as Irishmen, to drag the bigoted delinquents, whatever may be 
their exalted rank in life, not only before an enlightened public, 
but before a court of criminal jurisdiction. 

" The facts, as reported to me, are shortly these : — A Roman 
Catholic private soldier, belonging to a certain regiment of militia, 
for no other offence than for attending at chapel to discharge those 
religious duties which he, in common with all mankind, owed to 

his God, HAS BEEN SKNTENCED TO BIS TRANSPORTED FOR LIFE ! and 

had actually, like a common convict, proceeded so far on his passage 
into exile as the Isle of Wight. 

• Patrick Spence, a Catholic private in the Dublin militia, was re- 
quired to attend the Protestant service. He refused, and was at once 
conveyed to the black hole. He then wrote a respectful expostulation 
to his commanding officer ; for this he was tried by court martial, and 
sentenced to receive 999 lashes. The barbarous sentence was in the 
act of execution when he was offered the choice of an exchange into a 
condemned regiment, which he accepted. 



m 



" Sir, there are two courses left for us to adopt in this case ; the 
first, is to bring the facts, in whatever shape may be thought ad- 
visable, before the House of Commons ; the second, to have the 
business investigated in a court of law, and disposed of by the 
verdict of a jury. That the law, as it now exists, is sufficiently 
strong to punish the persons guilty of the crime, there can be no 
doubt. I shall therefore move that our secretary, Mr E. Hay, do 
open a subscription for the purpose of defraying the expense of 
having the matter fully investigated ; and that a sub-committee, 
consisting of five, be appointed to inquire into the truth of the 
facts, and to report to the general committee." 

The motion was seconded by Mr Hussey, and Mr Coyle 
called the attention of the meeting to the injustice 
done to the Catholics in Roscommon and Fermanagh, 
where a Catholic was not even allowed to hold the situation 
of a non-commissioned officer. The colonel of the Ferma- 
nagh regiment obliged every officer to take the Orange oath 
— a most cruel injustice. 

A great deal has been said and written by Protestants 
about the persecuting spirit of the Catholic Church, yet 
they have curiously overlooked the bitter and relentless 
persecutions of their own Church. At this very period a 
Catholic Church was robbed by some Orangemen, and 
though the robbery was clearly proved, the jury being also 
Orangemen, refused to convict; more than probably because 
they considered robbery under such circumstances as no 
sin. 1 Well might Mr O'Connell say, when speaking of the 



1 



1 Counsellor Kernan, a Fermanagh gentleman, was appealed to at 
this meeting to give information on the subject ; he said ; — 




necessity for proposing a compilation of the penal laws, 
that Englishmen might know the grievances from which 
Ireland had long suffered, that " from the unfortunate 
temper of the times, and the unhappy code of laws which 
prevailed on these subjects, a jury might possibly be found 
to strain the law to the worst purposes." 2 

O'Conuell visited Limerick on circuit during the summer 
of the year 1810. The admirable sketcli taken of him in 
the Court house on this occasion will be found at the head 
of this chapter. It is the only early likeness of O'Connell 
in existence. The features express more intelligence than 



: 



w 






" Sir, I am not competent to say (because I am ignorant of the fact) 
whether the private soldiers of the Fermanagh regiment, professing 
the Catholic religion, are prevented by the Earl of Enniskillen from 
exerting their religious duties — I should hope the fact is otherwise. 

" With respect to the circumstance of the scandalous outrage com- 
mitted in the Chapel of Enniskillen, the trial had been published in all 
the newspapers of this city ; and, to such persons as had read the report, it 
is unnecessary for me to state more than this fact ; namely, that at the trial 
there was sufficient evidence produced on the part of the Crown to convict 
the traverser, and that the verdict of acquittal was, therefore, not only 
contrary to evidence, but to the charge of Mr Justice Fletcher, the learned 
judge who presided. 

" It was not singular in that county, that the jury who tried the 
officer consisted of Protestants— there being but two instances, as I am 
informed, since the Revolution, of Catholics serving as jurors at the 
assizes of Enniskillen."— Dublin Morning Pott, December 15, 1810. 

- From his speech at the Catholic Committee, loth December 1810. 

Dublin Evening Post. 

All the extracts from newspapers given in this work are taken from 
the original source, a very large collection having been placed in my 
hands through the kindness of friends. 



"THE GOOD OLD TIMES." 



power, yet we can trace indications of the more massive 
expression which developed itself in after life.* 

O'Connell was fond of relating his adventures when on 
circuit ; and as he seldom lost sight of a joke, or failed to 
see one, his repertory of stories was sufficiently amusing. 
He would tell in after life of the " good old times " — good 
as far as the comfort of easy travelling was concerned, when 
a journey was to a great extent a pleasure. At such times, 
too, he could unburden himself of professional cares; and 
for a man who worked as he did, such relaxation must have 
been both necessary and enjoyable. 

'"In 1780/ he used to say, 'the two members for the county 
Kerry, when preparing to visit Dublin, sent to the metropolis for 
a noddy. The noddy took eight days to get to Kerry, and they, 
when seated in it, took seventeen days to get to Dublin ! Each 
night the two members, owing to the absence of inns, quartered 
themselves at the house of some friend ; and on the seventeenth 
day they reached Dublin, just in time for the opening of the ses- 
sion.' 

" Speaking of the inn at Mill Street, he said : — The improved 
roads have injured that inn. I well remember when it was the 
regular end of the first day's journey from Tralee. It was a com- 
fortable thing for a social pair of fellow-travellers to get out of 
their chaise at night-fall, and to find at the inn (it was then kept 
by a cousin of mine, a Mrs Cotter) a roaring fire in a clean, well- 
furnished parlour, the whitest table-linen, the best beef, the sweetest 
and tenderest mutton, the fattest fowl, the most excellent wines 



3 This likeness was taken by Mr Gubbins, an artist still living at the 
advanced age of 85. I am indebted to Mr Lenihan, author of the 
" History of Limerick," for the original, which is in his possession. 



"A RIGHT GOOD HOUSE." 



(claret and Madeira were the high wines there — they knew no- 
thing about champagne), and the most comfortable beds. In my 
early days it was by far the best inn in Munster. But the new 
roads enabled travellers to get far beyond Mill Street in a day ; and 
the inn, being therefore less frequented than of old, is, of course, not 
so well looked after by its present proprietor. 

" ' There was the Coach and Horses Inn at Assolas, in the county 
Clare, close to the bridge,' said O'Connell. ' What delicious claret 
they had there ! It is levelled with the ground these many years. 
Then, there was that inn at Maryborough ; how often have I seen 
the old trooper who kept it smoking his pipe on the stone bench at 
the door, and his fat old wife sitting opposite him. They kept a 
right good house. She inherited the inn from her father and mother, 
and was early trained up to the business. She was an only child, 
and had displeased her parents by a runaway match with a private 
dragoon. However, they soon relented and received her and her 
husband into favour. The worthy trooper took charge of the stable 
department, for which his habits well adapted him ; and the in-door 
business was admirably managed by Ids wife. Then, there was that 
inn at Naas, most comfortably kept — and excellent wine. I re- 
member stopping to dine there one day, posting up from the 
Limerick assizes. There were three of us in the chaise, and one was 
tipsy ; his eyes were bloodshot and his features swollen from hard 
drinking on the previous night, besides which he had tippled a little 
in the morning. As he got out. of the chaise, I called him ' Parson !' 
to the evident delight of a Methodist preacher, who was haranguing 
a crowd in the street, and who deemed his own merits enhanced by 
the contrast with a sottish minister of the Establishment.' " 

On one occasion as he travelled from Ashbourne to 
Dublin, some objects of antiquity which Grose 4 had 



4 This is the Captain Grose of whom Burns wrote — 
" A chiel's amang you takin' notes, 
And, faith, he'll prent 'em." 



illustrated, recalled that antiquary to the Liberator's 

mind : — 

" ' Grose,' said he, ' came to Ireland full of strong prejudices 
against the people, but they gave way beneath the influence of Irish 
drollery. He was very much teazed, when walking through the 
Dublin markets, by the butchers besetting him for his custom. At 
last he got angry, and told them all to go about their business ; 
when a sly, waggish butcher, deliberately surveying Grose's fat, 
ruddy face and corpulent person, said to him, ' Well, plaze your 
honour, I won't ask you to buy since it puts your honour in a 
passion. But I'll tell you how you'll sarve me.' ' How t ' inquired 
Grose in a gruff growl. ' Just tell all your friends that its Larry 
Heffernan that supplies your honour with mate, and never fear I'll 
have custom enough.' " 

Passing through Nenngh, he said — 

" Some years ago, when this neighbourhood was much infested 
with robbers, I was travelling on circuit. My horses were not very 
good, and just at this spot I saw a man whose movements excited 
my suspicions. He slowly crossed the road, about twenty yards in 
advance of my carriage, and awaited my approach with his back 
against the wall, and his hand in the breast of his coat, as if ready 
to draw a pistol. I felt certain I should be attacked, so I held my 
pistol ready to fire, its barrel resting on the carriage door. The 
man did not stir, and so escaped. Had he but raised his hand, I 
should have fired. Good God ! what a miserable guilty wretch I 
should have been ! How sincerely I thank God for my escape from 
such guilt ! " 

We find O'Connell in Limerick again in August 1813, 
and engaged in " an affair of honour." While occupied 
in professional business, he got into an altercation with 
Counsellor Magrath, which, according to the custom of the 



1 



day, should be settled by pistols. The combatants met in 
the old court-mill field, the usual resort in such cases. Mr 
O'Gorman was O'Connell's second, and Mr Bennet was 
second to Mr Magrath. Mr Bennet stepped the ground 
by mutual consent; but at the last moment a party of 
gentlemen came on the ground to make peace, or, if peace 
could not be made, to see the fight out. Peace was made 
eventually. Magrath declared himself sorry for what had 
occurred, and O'Connell declared he bore no enmity to 
Magrath. The two gentlemen then shook hands, and drove 
back to the city in the same carriage, conversing. 

Possibly it never occurred to any of the party how very 
different the end might have been. 

O'Connell's fame as a barrister was now increasing 
daily. 8 In the autumn assizes of 1813, twenty-six cases 
were tried in Limerick Court-house, and he held a brief 
each case. His professional career was a series of suc- 
cesses ; and it is no wonder that it was considered a favour 
when he accepted a retainer. 

One case in which he was engaged at this period was 
painfully characteristic of the times. O'Connell's address 
to the judge, when moving for a conditional order against 



5 Sir Joshua Barrington thua describes O'Connell's appearance at this 
period, in his not very veracious " Personal Sketches," voL ii. p. 452. 
"O'Connell at that day was a large, ruddy, young man, with a must 
savage dialect, an imperturbable countenance, intrepid address, etprteterea 
nihil." Sir Joshua was not gifted with much discrimination jf charac- 
ter, or he would not have written the last sentence. 



322 CARRYING ''EGGS TO A BAD MARKET." 



M 



the magistrates concerned in the affair, will sufficiently 
explain the circumstances. 

" The facts of the case," he said, " are really curious, and would 
he merely ludicrous hut for the sufferings inflicted on my client. 
The affidavits stated that a peasant girl named Hennessey had a 
hen which laid — not golden eggs, but eggs strangely marked with 
red lines and figures. She, on the 21st April 1813, brought her 
hen and eggs to the town of Roscrea, near which she lived, and of 
which the defendant was the Protestant curate. It appeared by 
the result that she brought her eggs to a bad market, though at first 
she had some reason to think differently ; for the curiosity excited 
by those eggs attracted some attention to the owner ; and as she 
was the child of parents who were miserably poor, her wardrobe was 
in such a state that she might almost literally be said to be clothed 
in nakedness. My lord, a small subscription to buy her a petticoat 
was suggested by the person who makes the present affidavit, him- 
self a working weaver of the town, James Murphy, and the sum of 
fifteen shillings was speedily collected. It was a little fortune to 
the poor creature ; she kissed her hen, thanked her benefactors, and 
with a light heart started on her return home. But diis aliler 
visum ; at that moment two constables arrived with a warrant signed 
by the Rev. William Hamilton. This warrant charged her with the 
strange offence of a foul imposition. It would appear as if it were 
issued in some wretched jest arising from the sound, not the sense. 
Rut it proved no joke to the girl, for she was arrested. Her hen, 
her eggs, and her fifteen shillings were taken into custody, and car- 
ried before his Worship. He was not at leisure to try the case that 
day. The girl was committed to Bridewell, where she lay a close 
prisoner for twenty-four hours, when his Rev. Worship was pleased 
to dispose of the matter. Without the mockery of any trial, he 
proceeded at once to sentence. He sentenced the girl to perpetual 
banishment from Roscrea. He sent her out of the town guarded 
by three constables, and with positive injunctions never to set foot 
in it again. He decapitated her hen with his own sacred hands. 



' 



m 



« I 



(A 



"CONTRARY TO GOOD MANNERS." 



323 



He broke the eggs and confiscated the fifteen shillings. When the 
girl returned to her home— the fowl dead, the eggs broken, and the 
fifteen shillings in his reverence's pocket, one would suppose justice 
quite satisfied. But no ! his Worship discovered that Murphy had 
collected the offending money ; he was therefore to be punished. 
He was, indeed, first tried — but under what law, think you 1 Why, 
literally, my lords, under the statute of good manners. Yes, under 
that act, wherever it is to be found, was Murphy tried, convicted, 
and sentenced. He was committed to Bridewell, where he lay for 
three days. The committal states ' that he was charged on oath 
with having assisted in a foul imposition on public credulity — con- 
trary to good manners.' These are the words of the committal ; and 
he was ordered to be detained until he should give security — ' for 
his good behaviour.' Such is the ridiculous warrant on which an 
humble man has been deprived of his liberty for three days. Such 
are the details given of the vexatious proceedings of the reverend 
magistrate. It was to be hoped that those details would turn out 
to be imaginary ; but they are sworn to — positively sworn to — and 
require investigation, the more especially as motives of a highly 
culpable nature were attributed — he (O'Connell) hoped unduly 
attributed — to the gentleman. He was charged on oath with hav- 
ing been actuated by malice towards this wretched girl because she 
was a Catholic. It was sworn that his object was to establish some 
charge of superstition against her, upon no better ground than this — 
that one of those eggs had a mark on it nearly resembling a cross." 

The rule was granted, but Mr Hamilton compromised 
the case, in consequence of the public exposure of his con- 
duct. 

One of O'Counell's best reported and most brilliant 
speeches was made at Limerick, while he was on circuit 
in 1812. The meeting was held at the Commercial Build- 
ings, George's Street. T. It. Ryan, of Scarteen, Esq., was 



i 




in the chair, and the meeting was opened with a speech 
from Mr William Roche, the same gentleman who repre- 
sented the city of Limerick, on Repeal principles, from the 
passing of the Reform Bill until 1841. After expressing 
general concurrence with the proceedings of the Catholic 
Board in Dublin, confident hope of the success of the 
cause in the next session of Parliament, gratitude to its 
friends in that body, and aversion to the idea of what were 
called " securities " being given in return for Catholic 
emancipation, he read the resolutions that had been pre- 
pared, and moved their adoption. 

O'Connell then rose amid thunders of applause, and 
spoke for more than an hour. The following are some of 
the most striking passages in his address : — 

" We owe it to the liberality of the Irish Protestants, to the zeal 
of the Irish Presbyterians, to the friendly exertion of the Irish 
Quakers ; we owe, to the cordial re-union of every sect and denomi- 
nation of Irish Christians, the progress of our cause. They have 
procured for us the solemn and distinct promise and pledge of the 
House of Commons — they almost obtained for us a similar declara- 
tion from the House of Lords. It was lost by the petty majority 
of one ; it was lost by a majority, not of those who listened to the 
absurd prosings of Lord Eldon, to the bigoted and turbid declama- 
tion of that English Chief-Justice, whose sentiments so forcibly 
recall the memory of the Star Chamber ; not of those who were able 
to compare the vapid or violent folly of the one party, with the 
statesman-like sentiments, the profound arguments, the splendid 
eloquence of the Marquis Wellesley." 

He then denounced, in scathing and indignant language, 





the deliberate lie which Lord Castlereagh had uttered in 
the House of Commons, that no torture had been used in 
Ireland in the years 1797 and 1798. His hearers knew 
but too well how utterly false this statement was, but it 
answered the purpose for which it was uttered ; it silenced 
or satisfied the indignation of such Englishmen as were 
sufficiently humane to dislike this mode of government. 
Who, indeed, would believe any assertion made to the 
contrary, even by the nation, when a noble lord had spoken 
on the subject? And in our own time, the bold assertion 
of an unscrupulous politician is not unfrequently taken in 
evidence by those who prefer to believe a lie. 

In conclusion, O'Connell spoke on the all-important 
subject of the representation of the city ; and for the first 
time we find the idea thrown out openly of offering himself 
as a parliamentary representative : — 

" You deserve not freedom — you, citizens of Limerick, with the 
monuments of the valour of your ancestors around you — you are less 
than men, if my feeble tongue be requisite to rouse you into activity. 
Your city is, at present, nearly a close borough ; do but will it, and 
you make it free ! 

" I know legal obstacles have been thrown in your way. I know 
that, for months past, the Recorder has sat alone at the sessions — 
that he has not only tried cases, in the absence of any other magis- 
trate, which he is authorised by law to do, but that he has solely 
opened and adjourned the sessions, which, in my opinion, he is 
clearly unwarranted in doing ; he has, by this means, I know, de- 
layed the registry of your freeholds, because two magistrates are 
necessary for that purpose : I have, however, the satisfaction to tell 
you, that the Court of King's Bench will, in the next term, have to 



6 






if 






326 BIDDING FOR PARLIAMENTARY HONOURS. 



:l 



determine on the legality of his conduct, and of that of the other 
charter magistrates, who have banished themselves, I understand, 
from the Sessions' Court, since the registry has been spoken of! 
They shall be served with the regular notices : and, depend upon it, 
this scheme cannot long retard you. 

" I speak to you on this subject as a lawyer — you can best judge 
in what estimation my opinion is amongst you ; but such as it is, I 
pledge it to you, that you can easily obviate the present obstacles to 
the registry of your freeholds. I can only assure you that the con- 
stitution of your city is perfectly free — that the sons of freemen, and 
all those who have served an apprenticeship to a freeman, are all 
entitled to their freedom, and to vote for the representation of your 
city. 

" I can tell you more : that if you bring your candidate to a poll, 
your adversary will be deprived of any aid from non-resident or 
occasional freemen ; we will strike off his list the freemen from Gort 
and from Galway, the freemen from the band, and many from the 
battalion of the city of Limerick militia. 

" In short, the opening of the borough is a matter of little 
difficulty. If you will but form a committee, and collect funds, 
in your opulent city, you will soon have a representative ready 
to obey your voice — you cannot want a candidate. If the 
Emancipation Bill passes next session, as it is so likely to do, 
and that no other candidate offers, I myself will bring your pre- 
sent number to the poll. I, probably, will have little chance of 
success — but I will have the satisfaction of showing this city and 
the country what the free-born mind might achieve if it were pro- 
perly seconded." 

O'Connell was always singularly happy in his allusions 
to public events and circumstances. There are many men 
who can allude to the passing topics of the day in their 
public speeches, but there are few who can point their allu- 
sions like O'Connell. We find a remarkable instance of 



FELICITOUS EXPRESSION. 



m 



this felicity of expression and of application at the con- 
clusion of this eloquent address. 

Irish soldiers were at that time protecting the liberty of 
England, and but for Irish soldiers England would have 
been, for a time certainly, if not permanently, conquered 
by French valour. O'Connell said, " I wish to see the 
strength of this island — this unconquered, this uncon- 
querable island — combined to resist the mighty foe of 
freedom, the extinguisher of civil liberty, who rules the 
Continent from St Petersburg to the verge of the Irish 
bayonets in Spain.'" 

Those who know Dublin need not be reminded that 
Merrion Square was, and is, one of its most fashionable 
residences. O'Conuell's professional advancement had 
already justified him in establishing himself there ; and 
in June 1811, we find him replying from thence to an 
address which was sent to him from Dingle. As it was 
one of the earliest, if not the very first, of the addresses 
ever presented to him, we insert it here. 

The address was adopted at a meeting described as of 
" the clergy, gentlemen, magistrates, and freeholders of the 
town and vicinity of Dingle, held in that town on the 15th 
day of June 1811, in pursuance of public requisition, 
Mathew Moriarty, Esq., in the chair," and was as fol- 
lows : — 

" To Daniel O'Connell, Esq. 

" Sie, — We, the gentlemen, clergy, magistrates, and freeholders 



of the town and vicinity of Dingle, assembled pursuant to a public 
requisition, desire to express to you our sense of your unwearied 
exertions in advocating the cause of our Catholic countrymen. 

" We are particularly anxious to convey to you our decided ap- 
probation of the manliness, candour, and perspicuity with which 
you have, at the aggregate meeting of the Catholics of Ireland, 
held in Dublin on the 28th ultimo, developed the tendency of the 
intended transfer of our militia, and displayed the machinations of 
those deluded men who style themselves Orangemen and Furplemen. 

" We anticipate from your exertion of talent and constitutional 
firmness the most beneficial consequences ; as that exertion has, we 
trust, roused to the consideration of these subjects every individual 
who feels interested in the welfare of the country, from the prince 
to the freeholder. 

"Your object is the same as ours; to prevent internal feuds and 
animosities, which have been hitherto so injurious to our unfortunate 
country ; and to promote that unanimity which can alone save and 
exalt those realms. • 

" We request of you to accept our most cordial thanks as a small 
tribute of merit pre-eminently resplendent on every occasion. 

" And be assured that it has made an indelible impression on us ; 
who repose a pleasing confidence in your exertions, disregarding 
and despising party feeling, and looking to the cause of our native 
country, equally dear to us all. 

" Signed, by order, 

" Edward Fitzgerald, Secretary. 
"Dingle, June 154A, 1811." 

Mr O'Connell's reply was in the following terms : — 

" Gentlemen, — Your address has surprised me almost as much 

as it has pleased me. I cannot but owe it to your friendship, that 

you have noticed so humble an individual. I am proud of your 

approbation. 

" The principle on which I have been, and am an advocate of 

Catholic Emancipation, is not confined to Ireland. It embraces the 




cause of the Dissenters in England, and of the Protestants in the 
Spanish and Portuguese territories. I need extend it no further. 
The crime of intolerance is now confined among Christian nations — 
almost exclusively to England and her allies. Arbitrary as the 
military ruler of the French may be, and enemy as he is of civil 
and religious liberty, he has had too much common sense to commit 
the useless and absurd injustice of violating conscience. 

" For my part, I hate the inquisition as much as I do the Orange 
and Purple system, and for the same reason. The man who attempts 
to interfere between his fellow-man and his Deity is, to my mind, 
the most guilty of criminals. 

" You call our country unfortunate. She is unfortunate through 
the dissension of her children ; dissension has degraded her charac- 
ter, and annihilated her constitution. 

" In the name of religion, of charity, hate and rancour have been 
disseminated ; but a brighter era, I trust, approaches. And now it 
is the sacred duty of every man, who is faithful to his king and 
attached to the independence of his native land, to contribute his 
best exertions to extinguish every cause of animosity and pretence 
for disunion. — I have the honour to be, with great respect, your 
deeply indebted and faithful servant, 

" Daniel O'Connell. 

"Merrion Square, June 11th, 1311." 

On the 7th of May 1811, a dinner was given by the 
leading Catholics to some of their Protestant friends. The 
short speech made by O'Connell on that occasion was fully 
reported, and we give it unabridged. At a time when a 
Catholic Archbishop 6 not unfrequently presides, and very 

6 In the Standard, for July we find a report of a meeting of the Inter- 
national Union Congress, in the Middle Temple Hall, at which Arch- 
bishop Manning took the chair. There were some remarks made by 
his Grace on this occasion which singularly resemble the tone and spirit 




330 CATHOLICS ENTERTAINING PROTESTANTS. 



frequently assists at Protestant meetings, we may well 
recall with regret the statement of O'Connell, that this 
was "the first time when Catholic and Protestants puhlicly 
assembled at the festive board." 

" Major Bryan proposed the health of Sir James Riddall, whose 
absence, he regretted, was from indisposition. To this toast was 
added, at Counsellor O'Connell's suggestion, ' The Repeal of the 
Union.' " Counsellor O'Connell — ' Gentlemen, when I proposed that 
a Repeal of the Union should be coupled with the name of that virtu- 
ous patriot and friend to his country, Sir James Riddall, I was fully 
impressed that it is the only real Irish question ; and, allow me to 
say, that every Catholic in this meeting must regret the absence of 
that worthy Irishman, and the more so, as I understand it is occa- 
sioned by severe illness. If in this assembly any Irishman hears me 
who has mistaken the true interests of his country (as we tall are 
liable to err), and approved of that fatal law, the act of Legislative 
Union, this is a glorious opportunity for us to speak our sentiments, 
and, by deprecating so disastrous a measure, convince him that there 
is but one opinion on the subject in Ireland. This, I believe, is the 
first time Catholics and Protestants have publicly assembled at the 









of O'Connell's speech at the first public dinner of Catholics and Pro- 
testants. The Archbishop said : — 

" Before we thank Dr Bellows for the fertile, eloquent, and condensed 
address which he has delivered, I will ask you to bear with me for a 
moment, as I am irresistibly impelled to make one or two remark*. In 
mentioning those who have exercised an apostleship of charity in the 
work of mitigating prison discipline, it would not be right to forget the 
name of Elizabeth Fry. Our lecturer has given us examples of two of 
those great energies, those masculine activities (Howard and Wesley), 
which laboured to reform and purify the morals of men in the last 
century ; but the action of Mrs Fry was like the light of heaven and 
the dew fertilizing the earth, silent, irresistible, penetrating, and effica- 
cious, even beyond the power of energy." 



Pi 



SPEECH ON TEE OCCASION. 



331 



festive board — alas ! the first time we have sought access to each 
other's hearts. If such meetings shall frequently take place, and I 
trust in God they -will, it is impossible that your great and ancient 
nation — your nation famed for every physical good which can make 
existence valuable, and which has given birth to the best and bravest 
of the human race — it is impossible, I say, that any minister can 
tyrannise over you, or any foe effect your subjugation. If the spirit 
shall go abroad which pervades this meeting, is it too much to ex- 
pect that your enfranchisement is at hand, that your parliament 
must be restored 1 As it is the habit of men who follow my trade 
to talk much, you may, perhaps, fear that I trespass on your atten- 
tion ; but I shall be brief. A bigot — be he of what profession he 
may, whether Catholic or Protestant ; of what rank soever, whether 
monarch, peer, or peasant ; whether his brow is encircled with a 
diadem, or his body enveloped with rags — is a bigot to me. Louis 
XIV. disgracefully treated a brave and skilful warrior, Admiral 
Duchene, because he was a Protestant ; and Louis XIV. was, there- 
fore, an outrageous bigot. Our gracious prince, who is the parent of 
his Irish people, has given an earnest of what we may expect from 
him, by refusing to comply with the corrupt requisition of a minister; 
he will unite us, and thereby have, instead of one regiment of his 
own Irish, an entire nation.' " 



Vigorous efforts were made by Government to suppress 
the Catholic Association at the close of the year 1811 ; but 
O'Connell had inspired a spirit and vigour into the nation 
which was not easily repressed. 

On the 12th February 1811, the signal of attack was 
sounded by Mr Wellesley Pole, who issued a circular letter 
to the sheriffs and chief magistrates, in which the Catholic 
Committee was denounced as " an unlawful assembly sit- 
ting in Dublin." They were required — 



" In pursuance of the provisions of an Act of the 33rd of George 
IV., c. 29, to cause to be arrested and commit to prison (unless bail 
shall be given) all persons within your jurisdiction who shall be guilty 
of giving, or having given or published, any written or other notice of 
the election or appointment in any manner of such representative, 
delegate, or manager as aforesaid ; or of attending, voting, or acting, 
or of having attended, voted, or acted in any manner in the choice 
or appointment of such representative, delegate, or manager ; and 
you are to communicate these directions, as far as lies in your power, 
forthwith to the several magistrates of the said county." 

The Lord Chancellor said " the language was put to- 
gether in a slovenly manner," but Government proclama- 
tions do not always bear literary criticism. Mr Pole — or, 
to speak more correctly, his master, Mr Perceval 1 — meant 
action, and gave a very significant hint to that effect by 
sending a paper to each person to whom this letter was 
forwarded, entitled, " Some Observations and Extracts 
concerning Arrests of Criminals." The " Observations, 
Extracts," &c, concluded with this passage: — 

"As at this time the attention of magistrates must naturally be chiefly 
turned to cases of a seditious nature, some extracts from the several 
Acts of Parliament made, relative to such offences, are herewith sent." 

The first collision took place on the 23d of February, 
when Alderman Darley and Mr Babington presented them- 
Belves at the meeting. 

Lord Ffrench was called to the chair, and Alderman 
Darley at once announced his purpose : — 

" My lord, we are come as magistrates of the district to 



inquire whether the persons present compose the Catholic 
Committee ? " 

A long discussion ensued. Lord Ffrench would not com- 
mit himself, and demanded Alderman Darley's authority. 
Alderman Darley fell back on Government, and hoped the 
meeting " would be so good" as to disperse quietly. 

Mr Lidwell, a Protestant gentleman, declared he would not 
leave the room unless removed by the strong hand of power. 

Lord Ffrench begged to be allowed the honour of being 
the last man to leave the room, and declared he " had his 
night-cap in his pocket, and did not care where he went." 

After much discussion, Mr Darley was despatched to Mr 
Pole for positive instructions, and Mr Babington remained 
in custody of the meeting, and the meeting in custody of 
Mr Babington. 

Mr Pole performed a series of legal somersaults. He 
sent back his unhappy deputy with a polite message, say- 
ing that he would be happy to see Lord Ffrench, but Lord 
Ffrench refused to visit him aloue. Mr Darley then, act- 
ing on orders, deliberately denied any intention of dis- 
persing the meeting, if they had only assembled to petition 
Parliament ; although he had stated, on his first appear- 
ance, and in pursuance of his first orders, that he " had 
been ordered and directed by Government to request them 
to disperse, be their business what it may." 

Mr Wellesley Pole then endeavoured, with more tact 
than honesty, to make it appear that the Catholic Com- 



334 ADDRESS TO THE PRINCE OF WALES. 



mittee had asked for an interview with him, the reverse 
heing the fact. 

On the 8th of March the Catholics went to offer an 
address to the Prince of .Wales, now regent ; hut in this 
address they took care to express their disapprobation of 
the policy of Mr Perceval, who was the unvarying enemy 
of Catholics. The following gentlemen were to present the 
address : — Earls Shrewsbury, Fingal, and Kenmare ; Vis- 
counts Gormanstown, Netterville, and Southwell ; Lords 
Trimleston and Ffrench; Sirs Thomas Esmond, Edward 
Bellew, Hugh O'Reilly, Thomas Burke, and Francis Goold, 
Barts. ; Major-General O'Farrell ; Colonel Burke ; Messrs 
G. Bryan, R. M'Donnell, D. O'Connell, J. Keogh, Owen 
O'Connor, M. Donnellan, Edward Corbally, T. Wynne, 
J. Burke, Wm. Coppinger, Ambrose J. Roche, Edward 
Murphy, D. W. O'Reilly, George Browne, E. Taaffe, D. 
Caulfield. 

O'Connell made two speeches at this meeting, from which 
we give the following extracts : — 



% 



" I shall not consume the time of this meeting by entering into 
an explanation of our motives for presenting the address ; and I 
feel it would be a reproach to adduce any argument to justify a 
measure so anxiously wished for by the Catholics of Ireland. We 
owe it to his Koyal Highness to express, with heartfelt gratitude, our 
unfeigned thanks for the many favours and benefits conferred on us 
by his revered father, to whom we are perhaps indebted for the pri- 
vilege of meeting here this day. Here Mr O'Connell took a sum- 
mary view of the political state and incapacities of the Catholics at 



;.-' 'i 



O'CONNELL'S SPEECH. 



: 



b 



the accession of his Majesty to the throne, when, he said, they 
were excluded from every situation of trust, honour, and emolument — 
when the then existing laws sanctioned the breach of every honour- 
able principle — when there was hardly a grievauce or degradation 
that man could be subject to, that the laws did not inflict on the 
Catholics of Ireland. Thus stood the abominable code at the period 
of his Majesty's accession, and such hardships and slavery did 
it impose, that the mind cannot contemplate it without recoiling 
with horror and disgust. By adverting to this period of our his- 
tory, he did not wish to excite religious distinctions ; he did not 
wish to rekindle hatred and animosity among his countrymen ; his 
motives were widely different : they were to lay before the meet- 
ing the obligations we owed to his Majesty for the many privi- 
leges which the Catholics at present enjoy. ... He lamented 
that, through the misguided folly of our rulers, the country had 
already suffered too much. It had been involved in deep calamity 
ever since the baneful measure of Union had been forced upon dis- 
tracted Ireland. At that calamitous period the argument made use 
of by the Parliament of England, for withholding from the Prince 
his undoubted right, was, that by appointing him Regent, they pre- 
ferred him to William Pitt. The offence given to the Ministry of 
the present times seems to be, that the people prefer his Royal High- 
ness to the usurper, Perceval. It is observable that the moment 
the Regent was appointed, W. W. Pole set off for Ireland, to misre- 
present the Catholics and excite discord. He (Mr Pole) seemed to 
fear that in the liberal mind of the Prince something would be 
found that would drive faction out of its fastness. He took the 
most decisive measures that his little mind could suggest. Although 
a general committee of the Catholics of Ireland had been established 
for almost eighty years, he had the audacity to issue his proclama- 
tion, declaring that it was an illegal assembly, and that the meeting 
was guilty of a high misdemeanour. He thus thought proper to 
pronounce sentence without going to trial ; without the interposition 
of any judge. He said he acted under the advice of a judge, wlw is 
not a native of this country, and who is, therefore, ignorant of the 



®i 



Irish character. He admitted that the judge was an accomplished 
gentleman and an able lawyer, but Irishmen would not submit to 
be ruled by special pleadings and English technicality. But to 
return to the subject of the letter. It appears that it was the 
first act of his Royal Highness's government in Ireland. It was 
the ill-advised measure of William Wellesley Pole, the secretary 
of all ages. We know it could not have emanated from his 
Royal Highness. As for Wellesley Pole, he was first secretary to the 
King, then to the usurping protector, and then to the Regent ; but 
his first act was for the purpose of putting up the Orange party, and 
dividing Irishmen ; but this was not the act of the Prince ; his con- 
fidential friends' conduct, in both Houses of Parliament, is a sure 
pledge that what appeared as the first act of his regency was un- 
known to him. The Earl of Moira had disavowed the act, and he 
was not only a friend to his country, but he was the friend of his 
Prince. He could not speak in terms strong enough of the noble 
exertions of that great man in behalf of his country ; he was the 
true patriot, not like the men who might vote for the Catholic 
petition. He would disavow them, as they voted at the side of 
Perceval against their Prince. One member for the county he had 
belonged to had done so, and he hoped yet to meet him on the 
hustings to express the contempt he felt for such conduct. How 
different was the conduct of the other member of that county ; he 
would not mention him by name, but his grateful country felt his 
worth — the Knight of Kerry."? 

O'Connell's second speech was called forth, by a declara- 
tion which arose relative to an amendment condemnatory 



7 What Mr Perceval's opinion and policy was, is sufficiently evident 
from the not very elegantly-expressed epistle addressed to Lord Eldon, 
25th July 1811 : — " I should be prepared to advise a prosecution against 
such an illegal assembly, even if I had more doubts as to its illegality, 
because I feel assured that if the Irish Government is to be upheld at 
all such an assembly nosing it in its metropolis cannot be endured ; and 




of the Duke of Richmond, then Lord-Lieutenant. It was 
proposed by Major Bryan, and was opposed on the ground 
of inexpediency. After some discussion the motion was 
carried in a modified form. It prayed for inquiry into the 
circumstances connected with Mr Pole's circular letter 
and prayed that Mr Pole might be dismissed, if no justi- 
fication could be found, as well as the Duke of Richmond. 
It was certainly a bold step, the boldest ever yet taken by 
Irish Catholics. Hitherto they had submitted in silence to 
every oppression, to every attempt made to forbid their 
calling for justice ; for such was the mode of government 
in L-eland, that it was forbidden even to petition against a 
grievance, or for the removal of a disability. It was no 
wonder that the growing independence of the nation 
startled narrow-minded statesmen, who were enthusiastic 
admirers of liberty everywhere except at home. 

Mr Perceval's line of argument was curious, but not 
altogether without precedent in modern times. First he 
said he would be prepared to advise a prosecution, because 
the assembly was illegal ; then he said he would equally 
order it, even if he had only " doubts " as to its illegality ; 
and then he declared he would not have these men— men who 



that the prosecution will bring the question to a fair issue ; for, if the 
law is not at present strong enough to prevent it, it must be made so. ' And 
I have no doubt that if we take our measures wisely (that is, upon full 
proof that the assembly is truly revolutionary, however its title may be 
disguised), Parliament will see the necessity of putting it down."— 
Twiss's Life of Lord Eldon. 




CONVENIENT, IF NOT STRICTLY JUST. 



were many of them of the first families in Ireland — " nosing 
it," whatever that might mean, in the Dublin metropolis; 
then he said that the prosecution would bring the question to 
a "fair issue," and what a fair issue means when Government 
is on one side and the Irish people on the other, is tolerably 
well known even at the present day ; finally, by way of 
exordium, he came to the real pith and marrow of the 
matter, and declared that, if the affair was not illegal, which 
he manifestly doubted, then it must be made illegal. This 
plan of making a law to make an act illegal, after the act 
had been accomplished, was exceedingly convenient, if it 
was not strictly just. Mr Perceval's politics being such, it 
would scarcely be expected that the Irish Catholic nobility 
and gentlemen, who were the objects of his peculiar mode 
of legislation, should be very ardent admirers of his policy. 
In his second speech O'Connell said : — 



y;/ftc\ 



I 



i n 






" I declare, most unaffectedly, that my feelings are much inter- 
ested in the fate of this question. On the one hand, if the motion 
shall pass, it is to be feared that some of our best friends may take 
offence at it ; on the other, should it not be acceded to, it may 
encourage a supposition that we are prepared to submit to every 
species of insult without expressing our just indignation. A noble 
lord and two other gentlemen have spoken against it, whose hosti- 
lity to any measure, in a Catholic meeting, must be considered as 
almost fatal to that measure ; but in this case it will be forgotten, 
at a future day, what course of argument they pursued, when their 
opposition to the measure will be remembered. No gentleman has, 
however, thought of praising Mr Pole, although some eulogised the 
Lord- Lieutenant ; none has been so bold as to attempt that which 



¥ 



1 



■would rack and exhaust invention to make it palatable. No, sir ; 
it has been found necessary to squander the public money in pur- 
chasing the labours of hireling prints, and their depraved parasites) 
to bestow diplomatic wisdom on Mr Pole, and military skill on the 
redoubtable Lord Wellington. 8 .... Any man who could accept 
offices under a Perceval Ministry cannot be friendly to your eman- 
cipation. The Duke of Richmond came here as a military lord- 
lieutenant, and I suppose Mr Pole as a military secretary, expecting, 
in all probability, that a display of their talents might at some time 
be essential, and particularly amongst the Catholics, as if we could be 
hostile to an army composed entirely of such. The career of his 
Excellency's life has been a harmless one ; he is fond of amusement 



8 O'Connell was no great admirer of the Iron Duke. In the first 
place, he believed that he encouraged the Orange faction for political 
purposes ; in the second place, he despised him for his declaration, that 
the only misfortune of his life was his being an Irishman ; and he de- 
served to be despised for it. O'Connell spoke thus of him to Mr Daunt: 
— " I have two faults to find with him — one is, that I never yet heard 
of his promoting any person in the army from mere merit, unless backed 
by some interest ; the second fault is, that he has declared that the only 
misfortune of his life is his being an Irishman. There is a meanness, 
a paltriness in this, incompatible with greatness of soul. But abstract- 
edly from sentiment, he may be right enough ; for, great as his popu- 
larity and power have been in England, I have no doubt they would 
have been infinitely greater if he had been an Englishman. John 
Bull's adoration would have been even more intense and devoted if the 
idol had not been a Paddy." 

On another occasion O'Connell said that he had in his possession an 
original letter of the Duke of Wellington's eldest brother, Marquis 
Wellesley, addressed to Mr Mockler of Trim, in reply to an applica- 
tion which Mockler had made to the writer (who was then Earl of 
Mornington) to procure a commission in the army for his son. The 
brother of the future victor of Waterloo apologises to Mockler for his 
inability to assist him, saying, " that commissions were so hard to be 
got, that his brother Arthur's name had been two years upon the list, 
and he had not yet got an appointment." 



TWO EVILS TO BE DEPRECATED. 

and the convivial circle ; but I am not sure that the qualities are such 
as the government of Ireland needs at this moment, and I defy his 
panegyrists to produce any others. It has been said that the Orange- 
men are put down, but what proof have we for it ? I have been 
informed that a new Orange constitution has been framed within 
the last eighteen months ; if this be true, to what a state will not 
this country be again reduced. Nothing can be more deplorable 
than any association which has a tendency to divide Irishmen. 
Yes, there is to us one thing more deplorable ; and that is any 
measure which may create division among Catholics." 

He concluded by an earnest appeal to Catholics not to 
divide on matters of little importance. " Sir," lie ex- 
claimed, " what a victory it will be to your enemies to put 
one Catholic name against another when you divide." To 
promote union amongst all classes of Irishmen was one of 
the great objects of O'ConnelPs life ; but he desired, 
above all, to promote union between Catholics. His mind 
was sufficiently large to grasp the difficulties and misap- 
prehensions of others. He knew perhaps better than any 
man living then, and perhaps better than any man who 
has lived since, how fatally Catholic principles, both reli- 
gious and political, are compromised by dissensions. 

Those who are without the pale of the Church cannot 
understand the political divisions of those who are one in 
faith. A little more consideration, or a little less pre- 
judice, might show how these divisions, so far from derogat- 
ing from unity of faith on religious subjects, rather enhance 
it ; but it is difficult to fiDd men entirely free from prejudice, 
or of sufficiently comprehensive intellect to understand 





the intellectual peculiarities of others. Men who would 
have gone to the stake or the scaffold together joyfully 
for the faith, because it was one, would not perhaps salute 
each other on the street because they had political dif- 
ferences. 

This explains what appears phenomenal to Protestants ; 
and it explains why, when the faith is attacked, men who 
have been hitherto disunited, unite at once in its defence. 

The Catholics were left unmolested for a time ; but an- 
other attempt was made to dissolve the Catholic Commit- 
tee at the close of the year. It was, as we have said, the 
great effort of Government. A meeting was held on the 
9th of July in Fishamble Street Theatre, at which Lord 
Firjgal took the chair. 

The following were some of the resolutions then pro- 
posed : — 

" That being impressed with an unalterable conviction of its being 
the undoubted right of every man to worship his Creator according 
to the genuine dictates of his own conscience, we deem it our duty, 
publicly and solemnly, to declare our decided opinion and principle, 
that no Government can, with justice, inflict any pains, penalty, or 
privation upon any man for professing that form of Christian faith 
which he, in his conscience, believes. 

" That we shall, therefore, persevere in petitioning the Legislature 
for a total and unqualified repeal of the penal laws, which aggrieve 
and degrade the Catholics of Ireland. 

" That in exercising this undoubted right by petitioning, we shall 
continue to adhere to the ancient principles of the constitution, and 
to conform also to the peculiar restrictions which, by modern 
statutes, are imposed on the people of Ireland." 



M 






A TRIUMPH TO THE CATHOLICS. 



It was but the echo of the cry which had been uttered 
for so many hundred years in Ireland — " Freedom to wor- 
ship God." When the demand was pealed forth in the 
harmonious numbers of a poet's verse, it called forth tears 
of sympathy. It was very much admired when chanted 
by the " Pilgrim Fathers," but when it was uttered across 
the channel, it was sternly silenced. 

Proceedings were commenced against several of the 
gentlemen who had attended the meeting, but the meet- 
ing was perfectly legal, and after a trial, which lasted two 
days, Dr Sheridan, who was first arraigned, was acquitted. 
This was a triumph to the Catholic party, who were long 
accustomed to verdicts which were certainly not founded 
on evidence. 

An attempt was then made to bring an action against 
Chief-Justice Downes, who had signed the warrant for the 
arrest of this gentleman, but it was wisely permitted to 
drop. The whole question had turned on a word in the 
Convention Act. Catholics were forbidden to assemble 
" under pretence of petitioning," the real object being to 
prevent Catholics from meeting in public, as a body, for 
any purpose whatsoever. The Catholic Committee were 
meeting for the purpose of petitioning, as every one knew — 
none better than their enemy, Mr Perceval ; but it answered 
the purpose of the prosecution to declare that they did not 
mean what they said. And then he asserted that a pur- 
pose, a3 well as a pretence, was implied by the Act, 



s 



though the Act did not say so; and the Crown counsel 
was not a little disappointed when the traverser was 
acquitted.' 

But the Government were not satisfied, and at a meet- 
ing held immediately after the acquittal of Dr Sheridan, 
Lord Fingal was forcibly ejected from the chair. The 
proceedings were thus reported in the Freeman's Journal: — 

" A few minutes before twelve o'clock yesterday, Counsellor 
Hare, a police magistrate, entered the theatre, Fishamble Street, 
where the Catholic Committee were assembled, and took his station 
beside the chair which was prepared for the reception of Lord 
Fingal. 

" At two minutes after twelve his lordship arrived ; and, upon 
the motion of Counsellor Hussey. seconded by Counsellor O'Connell, 
he was called to the chair. 

" Mr Hare was about to address Lord Fingal, when Lord Netter- 
ville stood up, and moved that the Catholic petition be now read, 
which was seconded by Counsellor O'Gorman. 

" Mr Hare now addressed himself to Lord Fingal, evidently with 
a determination to prevent tfie reading of the petition, and persevered 
until he had accomplished this object. 

" Mr Hare. — My Lord Fingal, I beg to state what my object is 
in coming to this meeting. As chairman of this meeting, I have to 
inform you, that I come here, as a magistrate of the city of Dublin, 
by directions of the Lord- Lieutenant (his Excellency having been 
informed that this is a meeting of the Catholic Committee, com- 
posed of the peers, prelates, country gentlemen, and the persons 



9 " The law pronounces every Catholic to be faithless, disloyal, un- 
principled, and disposed to equivocate upon his oath until he shall have 
repelled this presumption by his sworn evidence [and even then he was 
seldom believed] in public court." — Penal Laics, p. 326. 



MR HARE AND LORD FINQAL. 



chosen in the different parishes of Dublin). I beg to ask you, aa 
chairman of this meeting, if that be the case, and what is your 
object 1 

" Lord Fingal. — Sir, we have met here for a legal and constitu- 
tional purpose. 

" Mr Hare. — Allow me to observe, that that is not an answer to 
my question ; — perhaps you did not distinctly hear me. I ask, is 
it a meeting of the Catholic Committee, composed of the peers, pre- 
lates, country gentlemen, and others in the city of Dublin ? 

" Lord Fingal. — I certainly do not feel myself bound to give you 
any other answer. We are met for the sole legal and constitutional 
purpose of petitioning. 

" Mr Hare. — My Lord, I ask you, as chairman of this meeting, in 
what capacity are you met 1 

" Lord Fingal. — We are met for the purpose of petitioning Par- 
liament. 

" Mr Hare. — My Lord, that is not an answer to my question. I 
speak deliberately and distinctly, in order that every person may 
hear and understand me. (Here some little confusion occurred, 
owing to several persons speaking together.) Mr Hare. — I hope 
I have leave to speak. (' Hear the magistrate,' from several per- 
sons.)" I beg leave to ask your lordship again, is it a meeting of the 
Catholic Committee, constituted by the Catholic peers, prelates, 
country gentlemen, and the persons appointed in the different 
parishes of Dublin 1 

" Lord Fingal. — I am not aware that I can give you any other 
answer than that which I have already given. 

" Mr Hare. — Then, my Lord, your answer is, that you are a meet- 
ing of Catholics, assembled for a legal and constitutional purpose 1 

" From several voices. — No, no ; there was no answer given in 
such terms. 

" Counsellor O'Connell. — It is a most unusual thing for any 
magistrate to come into a public meeting to catechise, ask questions, 
and put his own construction upon the answers. 



Hit HARE AND LOUD FINUAL. 



I 



" Mr Hare. — My Lord, am I to understand that you decline 
answering me fully what meeting you are, and the purpose of your 
meeting 1 

" Lord Fingal. — We are met for a legal and constitutional 
purpose. 

" Mr Hare. — I wish, to be distinctly understood : I have 
addressed your lordship explicitly two or three times. Am I to 
understand that you will give no other answer to my question 1 Do 
you give no other answer? (Here some confusion arose, in conse- 
quence of several persons speaking together — some crying out to 
have the petition read, others calling on Mr Hay, and others re- 
quiring silence for the purpose of hearing Counsellor Hare.) 

" Mr Hare. — My Lord Fingal, I addressed myself to you so dis- 
tinctly, that I thought my question could not be mistaken. I con- 
sider your declining to give me a direct answer, as an admission that 
this is the committee of the Catholics of Ireland. 

" Counsellor O'Connell. — I beg leave to say, that as what passes 
here may be given in evidence, the magistrate has received a distinct 
answer to his question ; and it is not for him to distort any answer 
he has received into a meaning of his own — he is to take words in 
their literal signification. 

" Mr Hare. — My Lord, I consider your refusing to give any other 
answer as an admission of the fact of this being a Catholic Com- 
mittee. 

"Counsellor O'Connell. — Sir, if you please to tell gentlemen such 
is your belief, it is of no consequence to us : we are not to be bound 
by your opinion. 

" Mr Hare. — This is an admission of the fact that this is the 
Catholic Committee ; and I consider your lordship's refusal 

" (Here the meeting was interrupted by the confusion incidental 
to a number of persons speaking together.) 

" Mr Hare. — Does your lordship deny that this is the Catholic 
Committee 1 

" Counsellor Finn. — No, no : my Lord Fingal has not given you 
either admission or denial 



"Counsellor O'Connell. — We do not want the gentleman's assist- 
ance to make out meanings for us. Let him not imagine that the 
character of this meeting can be affected, or that he can bind this 
meeting, by any assertion he thinks proper to make. 

"Mr Hare. — Then I repeat that your lordship's refusal to give 
me a direct answer is an admission that this meeting is the Catholic 
Committee, and, as such, it is an unlawful assembly. 

" Counsellor O'Connell. — Mr Hare is now speaking in his magis- 
terial capacity, therefore, whatever he says give it attention. 

" Mr Hare. — My Lord, I say that this is an unlawful assembly, 
and, as such, I require it to disperse. I beg leave to say, that it is 
my wish to discharge my duty in as mild a manner as possible. I 
hope that no resistance will be offered, and that I need not have re- 
course to those means with which I am entrusted for the purpose of 
causing the meeting to disperse. 

" Lord Fingal. — It is not our intention to do anything improper, 
or to act in resistance to the laws of the land ; but it is my deter- 
mination not to leave the chair until I am obliged by some person 
to do so, in order that I may bring my legal action against the 
person who shall remove me. 

" Mr Hare. — My lord, I shall remove you out of the chair ; and 
in doing so, it will be an actual arrest. 

" Here, as might be naturally expected, some confusion arose, in 
consequence of a noise in the gallery, which, we are informed, was 
occasioned by police constables. 

" Mr Hare. — My Lord, if you'll have the goodness to leave the 
chair, that is a legal arrest. 

" He then took Lord Fingal by the arm and gently pushed him 
from the chair. 

" On the motion of Counsellor O'Gorman, seconded by Dr Luby, 
Lord Netterville was immediately called to the chair, from which he 
was removed by Counsellor Hare, in the same way that he had put. 
Lord Fingal out of it. 

" There was then a universal cry for Lord Ffrench to take the 
chair. His lordship, who was in a bad state of health, either had 



■t' v V: ; 







not arrived, or was not within hearing of those who called him to 
the chair. 

" The Hon. Mr Barnwall was then called to the chair ; but before 
he had taken it, Lord Ffrench had arrived, and was proceeding to 
his post, when, at the recommendation of Sir Edward Bellew, and 
at half-past twelve o'clock, the meeting dispersed. 

" After the Catholic meeting had been dispersed in Fishamble 
Street, a number of gentlemen repaired to Mr D'Arcy"s, the Crown 
and Anchor Tavern, Earl Street, for the purpose of signing a requi- 
sition to call an aggregate meeting of the Catholics of Ireland. 
While the requisition was preparing, Counsellor Hare, accompanied 
by Alderman Darley, went into the room where they were assembled, 
and asked whether that meeting was a meeting of individual gentle- 
men. Being answered in the affirmative, and being about to make a 
speech, Lord Ffrench told him they did not want to hear any of his 
speeches, nor would they listen to them ; if he came there for the 
purpose of acting, that he must proceed without delay. 

" Mr Hare said that he merely wished to say, that as they had 
acknowledged themselves to be a meeting of individual gentlemen, he 
would not molest them." 

" A Catholic requisition, for an aggregate meeting, to be held on 
Thursda}' next, at the Theatre, Fishamble Street, has been drawn up 
and signed by upwards of three, hundred pej-sons. 

" We have just learned that Lord Fingal interrogated the police 
magistrates after the dispersion of the committee, if he was to pro- 
cure bail to their arrest, and that they deny having arrested him .'" 

Although news did not travel with telegraphic speed at 
that period, the dispersion of the meeting, and LordFingaPs 
arrest, was soon known through the country. It was known 
also in many English cities, where the truth was told by the 
poet Shelley, who was present at the meeting. There were 




Englishmen even then, 1 as there are, thank God, still, and 
happily their number is increasing, who are capable of 
viewing Irish subjects from a just stand-point, who do not 
form their opinions on the illogical basis that everything 
English must be right, and everything Irish wrong. 

When Grattan presented the Catholic petition on the 31st 
of May 1811, he did his best, in one of his noblest and ablest 
speeches, to convince English senators that it was possible 
for them to err. He told them that they expected "the 
Author of the universe to subvert His laws, to ratify their 
statutes ; " God had commanded us to revere our parents, 
English law commanded and encouraged the Irish son to 
claim his father's estate. " The decalogue said, ' Do not 

1 Shelley wrote " Proposals for an Association of Philanthropists," for 
the amelioration of Ireland. He said — " It is my opinion that the claims 
of the Catholic inhabitants of Ireland, if gained to-morrow, would in a 
very small degree aggrandise their liberty or happiness. The disquali- 
fications principally affect the higher orders of the Catholic persuasion ; 
these would chiefly be benefited by their removal. Power and wealth 
do not benefit, but injure the cause of freedom and virtue. I am happy, 
however, at the near approach of this emancipation, because I am inimical 
to all disqualifications for opinion. It will not add one comfort to the 
cottager — will snatch not one from the dark dungeon — will root out not 
one vice alleviate not one pang. Yet it is a foreground of a picture in 
the dimness of whose distance I behold the lion lie down with the 
lamb, and the infant play with the basilisk ; for it supposes theextermi- 
natiot) of the eyeless monster — bigotry, whose throne has tottered for 
200 years. I hear the teeth of the palsied beldam Superstition chatter, 
and I see her descending to the grave. Eeason points to the open gates 
of the temple of religious freedom ; philanthropy kneels at the altar of 
the common God. I regard the admission of the Catholic claims, and 
the Repeal of the Union Act as blossoms of that fruit, which the summer 






steal,' the law, as made for Ireland, proclaimed full per- 
mission to rob a Catholic." 

English law cruelly oppressed the Irish nation, yet 
English law continued to oppress it " under the vain 
assurance that Providence would work a miracle in the 
constitution of human nature, and dispose it to repay 
injustice with affection, and oppression with cordial sup- 
port." 

The Irishman was to be eminently loyal, but he was not 
to have the benefit of law; he was to be an ardent up- 
holder of the constitution, but he was not to be upheld by 
it ; he was to rally found the throne when it was in 
dansrer, but he was never to see the face of the sovereign. 



sun of improved intellect and progressive virtue are destined to mature. 
I will not pass without reflection the Legislative Union between Great 
Britain and Ireland ; nor will I speak of it as a grievance so tolerable 
or unimportant in its nature as that of Catholic disqualification. The 
latter affects few, the Union affects thousands ; the one disqualifies 
the rich from power, the other impoverishes the peasant, adds beggary 
to the city, famine to the country, multiplies abjectness, whilst misery 
and crime play into each other's hands under its withering auspices. 1 
esteem, then, the annihilation of this second grievance as something 
more than a mere sign of good. I esteem it to be in itself a substantial 
benefit. The aristocracy of Ireland (much as I disapprove of other dis- 
tinctions than those of virtue and talent, I consider it useless, hasty, and 
violent not for the present to acquiesce in their continuance) — the aris- 
tocracy of Ireland suck the veins of its inhabitants, and consume that 
blood in England." 

If we did not know the power of prejudice in transmuting ideas, it 
would seem wonderful, and almost incomprehensible, how persons with 
ordinary common sense could fail to see the real cause of Irish poverty 
and Irish discontent. 



A tithe of justice was flung to him now and then, politi- 
cal or religious, as might be most convenient or least in- 
convenient to those who made the laws which they expect 
him to revere; and when he got this tithe, pitiful as it 
\\v\\ was, he was expected to break forth into paeans of praise 

and thanksgiving for the geuerosity of his master. If 
those thanksgivings are not uttered, he is pointed out as 
a monster of ingratitude ; if he suggests that he has only 
obtained a small instalment of justice, that justice is 
justice, and that he would like to have a little more of it, 
he is told that, as he is not thankful for what has been given 
to him, he does not deserve more. 

When O'Connell went on circuit in January 1812, he 
tried to rouse up the spirit of the country. His presence 
was, indeed, looked for in each of the southern towns 
which lie visited as a signal for public action. He was 
always specially welcomed in Limerick. On his first pro- 
fessional visit to that city in 1798, the late Mr James 
Blackwell, then gaoler of the city prison, retained his 
services for some of the criminals, and it is said his first 
actual practice at the bar was there. 

During his visit to Limerick, O'Connell made the 
acquaintance of a well-known Franciscan friar, Father Dan 
Hogan. The Franciscans had been always remarkable for 
erecting bell-towers, and the good friar was no exception to 
the general devotion of his order in Ireland. But at this 
time the penal laws forbade Catholics even the use of an 



& 



.'.■■■■ 






/m 



THE FIRST CATHOLIC DELL. 



m 



ordinary bell. 2 Father Dan, however, was determined to 
have a bell, and consulted O'Connell as to how the 
matter could be arranged without violating the law. It 
was precisely the kind of subject in which O'Connell took 
the warmest interest. He told Father Hogan that he might 
erect a cupola at the gable of his own house and have a bell 
there, and the friar was not long in carrying out the plan. 



2 " Limerick : its History and Antiquities," by Maurice Lenihan, Esq., 
J.P.M.R.T.A., page 420. This is a work of great value and importance, 
and should be in every library. We give some extracts from a letter 
written by Sir Arthur Wellesley to Brigadier-General Lee, on the state 
of Limerick in 1808. This shows how thoroughly he understood 
the country. The letter is dated Cork, 7th July 1808. It com- 
mences by explaining the duties of a general officer commanding a 
district in Ireland, and shows how entirely the country was under 
military government. " In the first place, the situation of a general 
officer commanding a district in Ireland is very much of the nature of 
a deputy-governor of a county or a province. . . . The Government must 
depend in his reports and opinions for the adoption of many measures 
relating solely to the civil administration of the country. It is the duty 
of every government oflicer to make himself acquainted with the local 
circumstances of his district, and with the characters of the different 
individuals residing within it." He then proceeds to warn his corres- 
pondent of " certain circumstances which exist in nearly all parts of 
Ireland." These "certain circumstances " were, that Government was 
constantly deceived by representations about the state of the country, 
which were partially or wholly false ; that the desire to " let a building 
for a barrack," the "desire to have troops in the country," the "desire to 
have the yeomen called out frequently," occasioned representations of 
disturbances which did not exist, or which only existed in a very slight 
degree. Upon these occasions " letter after letter " was written to the 
Government demanding troops. He had recommended examining 
witnesses on oath, but admitted that this remedy was not always 
effectual, "for it frequently happened that the information on oath was 



On the 1st of June 1809, the citizens of Limerick heard a 
bell calling them to mass for the first time within the 
memory of that generation ; yet so great was the fear of 
Catholics lest they should bring down vengeance on their 
heads, that a second bell was not erected until 1814, when 
one was put up in the then parochial chapel of St John. 

On the 6th of July 1812 ? there was an enthusiastic 
meeting of Catholics in the Commercial Buildings, Lime- 
rick, at which O'Connell spoke : — 

" The occurrences of the present day strongly recall to my mind 
a former period of Ireland's misfortune ; and that grave of Irish 
prosperity, the Legislative Union, gapes before my eyes with all its 
sepulchral horrors ! 



equally false with the original representations." All this was pleasant 
for Brigadier-General Lee. There was, however, one satisfactory conclu- 
sion. His duty was plain. The poor people, " who committed outrages 
and disturbances, might have reason to complain," but this was not a 
subject of consideration for the general officer; he must " support the law, 
and whoever broke the law must be considered in the wrong." This line 
of action was simple, and saved a good deal of trouble. He adds, " What- 
ever may have been the nature of the provocation he may have received," — 
a man might be shot down like a dog by an Orangeman, his family might 
consider that as the law would not punish the Orangemen they might 
themselves do so ; but no, they were to submit, and be thankful that they 
were not all shot. " Provisions," continues Sir Arthur, " might be too 
dear, rent too high, and the magistrates might not do their duty as they 
ought to the poor;" no matter, the landlords were to go free, the magis- 
trates were to pass uncensured, but the poor, God help them! " were to 
be brought to justice." This was the advice given on mature delibera- 
tion by the future Duke of Wellington, as he was about to set forth on 
an expedition to free the continent of Europe from the " iron rule " of 
Napoleon. 






m 

if 



" It is a circumstance, well known to every reflecting mind that 
the unhappy dissensions, which rent the country asunder, mi-ht 
have been suppressed at the beginning, did not that statesman 
called ' the great man, now no more,' think them essentially necessary 
to bring about his favourite political project, the union of both 
countries. 

"He watched the evil in its progress and maturity, and when the 
malignant poison of disaffection had mixed with the blood of the 
people, he awoke, as it were, from a dream, and was alive to all the 
horrors of the disease. It then became necessary to have resort to 
strong and desperate measures ; and before the country had recovered 
from the shock of civil animosities, while the sorrows of the past 
had fixed the mind, and rendered it careless for the future, the 
Union was proposed, and the Union was carried ! " 

These observations were received with unbounded ap- 
plause. In Cork he also addressed a meeting. Mr Eneas 
M'Donnel moved a vote of thanks to him in these words :— 

" That the thanks of the Catholics of the county and city of Cork 
are most eminently due, and most gratefully given, to the indepen- 
dent and indefatigable advocate of Irish rights-Daniel O'Connell 
Esq.— as well for the brilliant exertions he has uniformly made in' 
support and advancement of the Catholic cause, as for the un- 
daunted and patriotic spirit with which he has defended at ill 
times and in all places, the Catholic character against its calumnia- 
tors, high and low." 

It might be supposed that such a resolution would be 
passed by acclamation; yet such was the state of the 
Catholic body, such the fears of exciting the jealousy of 
those who were its least useful, though most obstructive 
members, that it was considered wise to let the reso- 
lution drop. 




RE LAND always was, and 
we suppose always will be, 
the grand battle-ground of 
English administrations. If 
Ireland shall ever become 
politically an integral por- 
tion of the British Empire, if a time shall ever 
arrive when there will be no Irish question, 
honourable members in Opposition would be 
surely at a loss to find another happy hunting- 
ground for political grievances. Such a state 
of things would be only regretted by those who, 
consciously or unconsciously, bring forward 
Irish grievances for political purposes. In 



OX 



England a change of Ministry makes but little difference 
to the vast multitude of the population. Now and then a 
great national interest stirs up the sluggish blood of the 
miner or the farm-labourer, the comfortable husbandman, 
or the thriving village shopkeeper ; but unless some such 
question as war or Corn-laws arises, the classes who form 
the mass of the people trouble themselves very little about 
political changes. 

John Wilson Croker, who wrote of the state of Ireland 
iu 1807, said " that Ireland had a quicksand Government, 
which swallowed in its fluctuations every venture at re- 
form. In seven years we have had five chief governors and 
eight chief secretaries of different principles and parties, 
each shifting the abortive system of his predecessor by a 
system equally abortive." 

It is only in politics that such anomalies exist. If 
they were attempted in physical science, the common sense 
of mankind would rise up and denounce the absurdity, and 
the victims of it would receive the sincerest commiseration. 
But the absurdity of this mode of government seems not 
to have been recognised, at least it has not been recognised 
practically. The process is, however, going on even at 
the present day with every appearance of being a perennial 
institution. The "Whig and the Tory, the Liberal and the 
Conservative, has each his own theory of government. In 
England there is no opportunity for exceptional practice 
or for interesting experiments. Ireland affords ample sub- 



3b 



w+ 



ii 









ject for any amount of political diagnosis. The patient 
max struggle now and then to free himself from the hands 
of his wise physicians, but his struggles are not rewarded 
with success, expatriation is his only remedy, and that 
remedy is sought with an avidity which shows the terrible 
nature of the disease. 

In England when a "Whig Prime Minister goes out, and 
a Tory comes in, there is a good 'deal of what the Yankee 
would denominate " tall talk; " in Ireland, there is a good 
deal of unpleasant action. 

As long as men confine themselves to talking politics, 
very little harm is done ; when they come to act them, the 
results are very different. In Ireland the Whig going out 
means Orange ascendancy ; the Whig coming in means 
that the new Prime Minister will, as far as he dare, or as 
far as he is disposed, do some justice to the vast majority 
of the nation. The Orangeman who curses the Pope 
in Belfast will be fined a little more rigorously, and some 
popular Catholic lawyer will get a seat on the bench ; 
some respectable Catholic county gentleman will have the 
honour of adding J.P. to his name. Once in a century 
some real justice will be done to Catholics. There will be 
Emancipation, or there will be the removal of a Church 
which few Irishmen believe to be divine, and for which few, 
indeed, would care to sacrifice a year's income, much less 
their lives. The interests of the Whig minister are not 
Irish ; he does just as much as is necessary to satisfy his 



1.1 




360 IGNORANCE OF IRISH AFFAIRS. 

conscience, if he lias one ; or to promote his interests, if he 
has not one. It is dangerous ground. He has, above, all 
things, to fear opposition, opposition needs a fulcrum for 
its lever, Irish politics. The Tory appeals to the " sense of 
the country," the unhappy minister is described as a Jesuit 
in disguise, or, at least, having Papistical tendencies. The 
general body of English statesmen do not understand Irish 
politics, and know as much about the state of Ireland as 
they do about Timbuctoo ; but they do understand, or which 
is quite the same thing, they fancy they understand, a No- 
Popery cry. 

Formerly the No-Popery cry was got up violently. The 
Irish were all Papists, or nearly all, and their one object in 
life was to massacre the heretic, to kill the poor, innocent, 
inoffensive Orangemen, who only banded together for their 
own support. The Englishman who knew nothing of Irish 
history, and who believed the Irish to be a nation of bar- 
barians, quite believed this. They never heard of any 
Orange cruelties, of any Protestant massacres ; they knew 
nothing of violated treaties, or the details of penal laws. 

By-and-by the tradition became weakened. English- 
men had more intercourse with Ireland and with these 
Papists. They came to know that they were not quite so 
bad as they had traditionally believed for so many cen- 
turies. Still the old prejudice remained. There is nothing 
more difficult to eradicate than prejudice. There were, 
there is, a certain class always ready to take up a No-Popery 



ASSASSINATION OF MR PERCEVAL. 



cry, but now it must be put in rather a different form. It 
answers the purpose, however, equally well. The Opposi- 
tion who wish to get in are not very scrupulous about the 
means. They do get in, and, behold, a new policy for 
Ireland. 

The Orangemen who have supported them must be 
rewarded; the Papist must be "put down." He has 
been endured too long, pampered and petted by the infatu- 
ated policy of the last party in office, and he will now be 
made to feel that he is an inferior being ; one who is only 
tolerated, and who should be extremely thankful for 
toleration. What right has he, indeed, to expect favours ? 
And with this class of politicians, justice, where a Catholic 
is concerned, is believed to be a favour. 

Thus, by this perpetual change of policy a continual 
bitterness is kept up ; each party expects his turn, when 
he hopes to triumph over the opposite party. It would be 
better, and more worthy of the so-called enlightened nine- 
teenth century, if the balance of government was so equal, 
that whoever might predominate for the moment might 
feel it more than unwise to make that predominence an 
excuse for tyranny. 

On the 11th of May 1812, Mr Perceval was assassinated 
by Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons. 
The blow was so sudden, so unexpected, so entirely un- 
looked for, and apart from any kind of probabilitv. that 
tiis nauion was suinned with Horror. There were, milieu. 



fm 




THE PRINCE OF WALES. 



some who thought that England had been " cursed by his 
sway," but they were few. Ireland had no reason to bless 
his memory certainly. 

There was consternation in political circles, and there 
was confusion also. One brilliant statesman, haunted by 
the pre-Newdegate phantom of an imaginary Popish plot, 
declared that it was all the fault of the Catholics. " You 
see, my lords," exclaimed the sapient Earl of Posse, "you 
see, my lords, the consequences of agitating the question 
of Catholic Emancipation." A man with one idea is gene- 
rally a fool. If there had been an exceptionally high tide, 
he would have attributed any damage it might have done 
to the Papists also. 

The Irish Catholics had long trusted the Prince of 
Wales. They believed the solemn promises he had made 
that he would at least consider their claims when he came 
into power. Even when he did obtain all but the name 
of king, when the poor old monarch was wandering 
dreamily through his palaces in hopeless idiocy, and the 
young prince ruled ; they believed, with the utter trusting- 
ness of their Celtic nature, that he was only kept from 
fulfiling his promises by evil counsellors, by this Perceval 
especially, who was now gone to his account. They were 
soon undeceived. O'Connell may have had some hope, but 
he was one of the first to discover his real character. 

" I believe," said O'Connell, " there never was a greater scoundrel 
than that prince. To his other evil qualities, he added a perfect 



71 






firm 



VI < 



o 



[4 



disregard fur truth. During his connection with Mrs Fitzherbert, 
Charles James Fox dined with him one day in that lady's company! 
After dinner, Mrs Fitzherbert said, ' By the by, Mr Fox, I had 
almost forgotten to ask you what you did say about me in the House 
of Commons the other night? The newspapers misrepresent so 
very strangely that one cannot depend on them. You were made to 
say that the prince authorised you to deny his marriage with me.' 
The prince made monitory grimaces at Fox, and immediately said, 
' Upon my honour, my dear, I never authorised him to deny it.' 
' Upon my honour, sir, you did,' said Fox, rising from the table. 
' I had always thought your father the greatest liar in England, but 
now see that you are.' " 

Moore said of him, " I am sure the powder in his Royal 
Highness' hair is much more settled than anything in his 
head or in his heart." 

It was of him also that Moore wrote one of his touching 
melodies, a melody which is sung by many who have little 
idea of its jjolitical origin. 

" I saw thee change — yet still relied ; 
Still clung with hope the fonder; 
And thought, though false to all beside, 
From me thou wouldst not wander. 
But go, deceiver ! go — 

The heart whose hope could make it ♦ 
Trust one so false, so low, 

Deserves that thou shouldst break it." 

A meeting was held on the 18th June 1812, at Fish- 
amble Street Theatre — Lord Fingal in the chair — at which 
Mr Hussey gave an account of the proceedings of the 



:-0 



gentlemen who had heen sent to Loudon on the part of 
the Catholics. 

" He stated, that on applying for a personal interview with his 
Royal Highness the Prince Regent, they received a blunt refusal, 
and were informed by Mr Secretary Ryder, that the address to his 
Highness, with which they were charged, should be presented at 
one of his public levees ' in the usual way.' 

" Every artifice," continued Mr Hussey, " every hostility was 
used by the administration and its adherents against the Catholic 
petition to Parliament. The same cry was raised which gave them 
in England the value of popularity at their outset ; and in every 
street we were met by placards from various debating societies, that 
the question to be argued was, would not the emancipating of the 
Catholics be attended with worse consequences than the naturalisa- 
tion of the Jews 1 Publications, which had laid dormant for hun- 
dreds of years, were dragged from their obscurity, and circulated with 
an anxiety and industry heretofore unknown; every calumny that 
could be thrown against our tenets, everything against our priesthood, 
every libel, and every lie, were marshalled aaainst us/" 

• The famous "witchery" resolutions were passed at - this 
meeting. The resolutions obtained this name from the 
very plain allusion contained in the first resolution to 
the witchery which was exercised by Lady Hertford in her 
guilty intrigues with the Prince Regent. 

The 4th, 5th, and 6th resolutions were the most impor- 
tant: — 

" 4. That from authentic documents now before us, we learn, with 
deep disappointment and anguish, how cruelly the promised boon 
of Catholic freedom has been intercepted by the fatal witchery of 
an unworthy secret influence, hostile to our fairest hopes, spurning 




alike the sanctions of public and private virtue, the demands of 
personal gratitude, and the sacred obligations of plighted honour. 

" 5. That to this impure source we trace, but too distinctly, our 
afflicted hopes and protracted servitude, the arrogant invasion of 
the undoubted right of petitioning, the acrimony of illegal state 
prosecutions, the surrender of Ireland to prolonged oppression and 
insult, and the many experiments, equally pitiful and perilous, 
recently practised upon the habitual passiveness of an ill-treated, bufr 
high-spirited people. 

" 6. That cheerless, indeed, would be our prospects, and faint our 
hopes of success, were they to rest upon the constancy of courtiers, 
or the pompous patronage of men, who can coldly sacrifice the 
feelings and interest of millions at the shrine of perishable power ; 
or, deluded by the blandishments of too luxurious a court, can 
hazard the safety of a people for ill-timed courtly compliment. The 
pageants of a court command not our respect ; our great cause rests 
upon the immutable foundations of truth, and justice, and reason. 
Equal constitutional rights, unconditional, unstipulated, unpur- 
chased by dishonour, are objects dear to our hearts. They consist 
with wisdom, virtue, humanity, true religion, and unaffected honour; 
and can never be abandoned by men who deserve to be free." 

O'Connell surpassed himself in eloquence when passing 
these resolutions. He commenced by a clear statement 
of the various pledges which had been made by the Prince 
Regent at different times to assist the Catholics. There 
was no need to show that these pledges had been recklessly 
violated one and all. The Irish Papist would not be 
believed even on his oath. If he was permitted to take an 
oath, he was generallv obliged to swear that what he swore 
was true. There are some phases in the English political 
government of Ireland which might reconcile the Irishman 



MM 



i 



m 



to this insult to his faith and his honesty. Perhaps those 
Englishmen who found it so difficult to believe an Irish 
oath were little influenced by the knowledge of their own 
reckless disregard of their solemn pledges. After all, they 
could only be expected to judge others by themselves. 

Of the pledges made to Lord Kenmare, Lord Petre, and 
Lord Clifden, through the Duke of Bedford and Mr Pou- 
sonby, we need not speak. These pledges were left in the 
pawn-office of English honour, and men of principle were 
found at last to redeem them. 

The conclusion of O'Connell's speech is more important, 
for it might have been made in our own day with painful 
justice : — 

" We may still hope. Hope, the last refuge of the wretched, is 
left us ; and we lately indulged it almost with the pleasures of 
certainty. A crime, the horrid crime of causeless assassination, had 
deprived England of her Prime Minister — for, my Lord, everywhere 
but in Ireland assassination is admitted to be a crime. Here, also, 
it depends on circumstances; you have but to combine these cir- 
cumstances. Let the victim be an Irish Papist, let the murderer 
be an Orangeman, and let a legal junta administer the government 
in the name of the Duke of Richmond : it requires no more to 
turn murder into merit ! 

"The process in England is different. There they hanged and 
dissected the murderer, and transferred the advantages of the crime* 
if 1 may BO express myself, to the victim ; it really and truly has 
been considered a merit in Mr Perceval to have been murdered. 
The public men in England seem to think his death constituted not 
only an expiation for all his political sins, but turned his offences 
against his country into virtues. 



" For my part, I feel unaffected horror at ti is fate, and all trace of 
resentment for his crimes is obliterated. But I do not forget that 
he was a narrow-minded bigot, a paltry statesman, and a bad minis- 
ter — that every species of public corruption and profligacy had in 
him a flippant and pert advocate — that every advance towards re- 
form or economy had in him a decided enemy — and that the liberties 
of the people were an object of his derision. 

" All this has not been changed by the hand of this assassin ; yet 
I do, from my heart, participate in the grief and anguish which his 
premature fall must have excited within his domestic circle. The 
sorrows of his family have been obtruded on the public, by ill-judging 
party writers, with something like ostentatious affectation ; but I 
do not love the man — nay, I hate the man — who could contemplate, 
coldly and unmoved, the affecting spectacle of the wife and children 
standing in speechless agony round the lifeless body of the murdered 
husband and father; it was a scene to make a stoic weep. 

" But are all our feelings to be exhausted by the great ? Is there 
no compassion for the wretched Irish widow, who lost her boy — her 
hope, her support 1 I shall never forget the pathetic and Irish sim- 
plicity with which she told her tale of woe — ' My child was but 
seventeen ; he left me on Sunday morning quite well, and very 
merry, and he came home a corpse.' Are her feelings to be despised 
and trampled on t Is the murderer of her son to remain unpunished, 
perhaps to be rewarded t Oh yes ; for Byrne was a Papist, and the 
assassin, Hall, was an Orangeman, nay, a purple marksman ; and 
recollect, that his Grace the Duke of Richmond did not pardon him 
until after a most fair and patient trial. Hall was defended by his 
counsel and attorney ; he was tried by a jury of his own selection ; 
I say of his own selection — because he exhausted but few of Ins 
peremptory challenges ; nobody, indeed, would think of accusing 
honest Sheriff James of packing a jury against an Orangeman. 
Even had the list been previously submitted to the Secretary at the 
Castle, he would not have altered a single name ; Sir Charles Suxton 
might have reviewed it with perfect safety to the prisoner. 



:;0 



"After a patient trial, and a full defence, Hall was convicted ; he 
was convicted before a judge certainly not unfavourable to the pri- 
soner ; lie was convicted of having murdered, with the arms entrusted 
to him for the defence of the public peace, and in the public streets 
of your city, and in the open day, an innocent and unoffending youth. 
He has been pardoned and set at large — perhaps he has been re- 
warded : but can this be done with impunity ] Is there no ven- 
geance for the blood of the widow's son ? Alas ! I am not, I trust, 
inclined to superstition, yet it obtruded itself on my mind, that the 
head of the Government which had allowed the blood of Byrne to 
flow unrequited, might have vindicated the notion of a providential 
visitation for the unpunished crime." 3 

O'Connell then spoke, " not in anger, but in the 
deepest sorrow," of Lord Moira. He, too, was one of the 
many whom the Irish had trusted, and by whom they 
were betrayed. It is true, indeed, that his betrayal was 
not a betrayal of treachery, it was a betrayal of indifference, 
but the effect was much the same. 

There was little to hope for from the new Ministry, 
especially as Lord Wellesley had refused office, because it 
was distinctly avowed that nothing would be done for 
Catholics. The Orange faction were now ascendant 
and triumphant, and as they never "bore their honours 
meekly," the worst results ensued for the peace of uuhappj 
Ireland. 



3 In a letter from the Princess Elizabeth to the Hon. Mrs Scott, speak- 
ing of the murder of Mr Perceval, she says — ■" It is impossible not to 
shrink with horror when one thinks of an Englishman committing 
murder.™ Poor Princess ! how little she knew of the real history of her 
own time ! — Life of Lord Eldon, vol. ii. p. 204. 



CRIME EX A G Ell A TED. 



O'Connell declared again and again, his desire to work 
cordially with Irish Protestants. He was the first to make 
public acknowledgment, in the very warmest language, for 
any assistance he might obtain from them, and he had 
good reason to do so. There were many Irish Protestants, 
who worked with him cordially; and if he denounced the 
Orange faction in no measured words, it was because they 
were a faction, not because they were Protestants. 

If religion had not been used as a political engine by 
English statesmen, their factious bitterness would soon 
have died out.* 

It was necessary also at this time to get up a strong anti- 
h Mi feeling in England, and the task was by no means 
difficult. Men were driven to the verge of desperation, in 
truth to desperation, by being deprived of the most ordi- 
nary means of procuring the necessaries of life. These 
men did commit outrages, did commit murder ; and every 
outrage was magnified, as it passed through the manipulation 
of those who were interested in manipulating it; and every 
murder was represented as the most deadly, the most 
treacherous, and the most diabolical of crimes. From 
the way in which Irish agrarian murders were — shall 



* The Orangemen were very active this year. King William's 
statue in Dublin was adorned with extra ornaments. The custom of 
adorning this statue began in 1795, and was originated by a half-crazy 
bookseller named Mackenzie, who got the nickname of King William's 
milliner. 



2a 




vr 



TIMES OF DISTRESS. 



we say are? — spoken of, it might be supposed that the 
landlords were the most benevolent of human beings, who 
overwhelmed these wretches with a weight of mercy and 
kindness. How entirely the reverse of this practice was true, 
may be found in the sworn evidence of men of whose veracity 
there cannot be a question. 5 

Orange Lodges were then being established in England, 
where, unhappily, there is every effort being made at pre- 

6 In the report of the Select Committee, 1824, we find the follow- 
ing questions and answers : — " Mr Beecher said — ' I think they (the 
lower classes) have been unused to fair dealing from the upper classes ; 
if they get it, they seem gratified beyond measure.' Major Warburton 
declared that many of the people would willingly give a day's labour 
in times of distress for one meal. John Duncan, Esq., said, — ' To 
the want of employment I attribute much of our unhappy state.' 
John Wiggins, Esq., an English merchant, said ' The efforts I have wit- 
nessed are really extraordinary. People bringing manure from the sea 
up extraordinary cliffs. I give them infinite credit for perseverance in 
this way.' Francis Blackburne, K.C., said — 'On the property of Lord 
Stradbroke, in the county Limerick, there were forty or fifty families. 
The whole of that numerous body were dispersed, and their houses pro- 
strated ; they were, generally speaking, destitute of the means of support. 
That circumstance created a good deal of irritation in the county. [It 
will lie remembered that the Duke of Wellington said such ' irritation ' 
musi be put down.] This is not a singular case. The same thing is 
generally prevalent in the whole of the country.' He further said, ' The 
mass of the population were destitute of what in England would be con- 
sidered the necessaries of life.' Mr Kemmis, Crown Solicitor, gave an 
account of eleven murders which occurred from 1816 to 1838, all arising 
from evictions." 

Mi Kohl, in his well-known Irish "Tour," said — "When he saw the 
poor settlers of Livonia, he used to pity them ; but when he came to 
Ireland, lie found that the poorest of them lead a life of luxury compared 
with that of the Irish nation." 






m 



I 



<m 



i-Wi 



"PROTESTING CATHOLIC DISSENTERS." 371 

sent to increase them. Their one cry now, as then, is for 
their own ascendency; and some of our readers will remem- 
ber the treasonable language which they used at the period 
immediately previous to the disestablishment of the Irish 
Protestant Church, and the declaration made by many of 
them that their loyalty would last as long as their princi- 
ples were carried out, and no longer. 

On the 15th of June 1813, there was a meeting at 
Fishamble Street Theatre, at which over 4000 persons were 
present. After reading the resolutions, O'Counell made a 
singularly effective speech, from which we can only give a 
few extracts : — 

" Let me, in the first place, congratulate you on the progress 
which the principle of religious liberty has made since you last met. 
It has been greatly advanced by a magnificent discovery lately made 
by the English in ethics, and upon which I also beg leave to con- 
gratulate you. It is this : several Englishmen have discovered, in 
the nineteenth century, and more than four hundred years after the 
propagation of science was facilitated by the art of printing — several 
sagacious Englishmen have made this wonderful discovery in moral 
philosophy, that a man is not necessarily a worse citizen for having 
a conscience, and that a conscientious adherence to a Christian reli- 
gion is not an offence deserving of degradation or punishment." 

He then alluded to the Veto question. 

" They offer you emancipation, as Catholics, if you will kindly 
consent, in return, to become schismatics. 6 They offer you liberty, 



6 This was probably an allusion to Mr Butler's efforts to get a body 
of English Catholics together who would agree to the Veto, and call 
themselves, " Protesting Catholic Dissenters." 






\% 



as men, if you agree to become slaves after a new fashion — that is, 
your friends and your enemies have declared that you are entitled 
to Catholic emancipation and freedom, upon the trifling terms of 
schism and servitude ! 

" Generous enemies ! — bountiful friends ! Yes, in their bounty, 
they resemble the debtor who should address his creditor thus : — 
' It is true, I owe you £100 ; 1 am perfectly well able to pay you ; 
but what will you give me, if I band you 6s. 8d. in the pound of 
your just debt, as a final adjustment) Let us allay all jealousies,' 
continues the debtor, 'let us put an end to all animosities — I will 
give you one-third of what I owe you, if you will give me forty 
shillings in the pound of additional value, and a receipt in full, duly 
stamped, into the bargain.' 

" But why do I treat this serious and melancholy subject with 
levity ? Why do I jest, when my heart is sore and sad 1 Because 
I have not patience with this modern cant of securities, and vetoes, 
and arrangements, and clauses, and commissions. Securities against 
what? Not against the irritation and dislike which may and natu- 
rally ought to result from prolonged oppression and insult. Securi- 
ties — not against the consequences of dissensions, distrusts, and 
animosities. Securities — not against foreign adversaries. The 
securities that are required from us are against the effects of con- 
ciliation and kindness, against the dangers to be apprehended from 
domestic union, peace, and cordiality. If they do not emancipate 
us ; if they leave us aliens and outlaws in our native land ; if they 
continue our degradation, and all those grievances that, at present, 
set our passions at war with our duty, then they have no pretext 
fur asking, nor do they require, any securities ; but should they 
raise us to the rank of Irishmen, should they give us an imme- 
diate and personal interest in our native land, should they share 
with us the blessings of the constitution, should they add to 
our duty the full tide of our interests and affection ; then — then, 
say they, securities will be necessary. Securities and guards 
must be adopted. State bridles must be invented, and shackles 
and manacles must be forged, lest, in the intoxication of new 






lh 




liberty, we should destroy, only because we have a greater interest 
to preserve." 

The great orator then turned to historical facts, which 
were incontrovertible, for a proof of his assertions. 

" But to return to our own history. The reigns of the First and 
of the Second George passed away ; England continued strong ; she 
persevered in oppression and injustice ; she was powerful and re- 
spected ; she, therefore, disregarded the sufferings of the Irish, and 
increased their chains. The Catholics once Lad the presumption to 
draw up a petition ; it was presented to Primate Boulter, then 
governing Ireland. He not only rejected it with scorn and without 
a reply, but treated the insolence of daring to complain as a crime 
and punished it as an offence, by recommending and procuring still 
more severe laws against the Papists, and the more active execution 
of the former statutes. 

" But a new era advanced ; the war which George the Second 
waged on account of Hanover and America exhausted the resources 
and lessened, while it displayed, the strength of England. In the 
meantime, the Duke of Bedford was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. 
The ascendency mob of Dublin, headed by a Lucas, insulted the 
Lord-Lieutenant with impunity, and threatened the Parliament. 
All was riot and confusion within, whilst France had prepared an 
army and a fleet for the invasion of Ireland. Serious danger men- 
aced England. The very connection between the countries was in 
danger. The Catholics were, for the first time, thought of with 
favour. They were encouraged to address the Lord-Lieutenant, and 
for the first time, their address received the courtesy of a reply. 

" By this slight civility (the more welcome for its novelty) the warm 
hearts and ready hands of the Irish Catholics were purchased. The 
foreign foe was deterred from attempting to invade a country where 
he could no longer have found a friend ; the domestic insurgents 
were awed iuto silence ; the Catholics and the Government, simply 



13 






M 



CHANGE OF FORTUNE. 



f c< 



by their combination, saved the state from its perils ; and thus did 
the Catholics, in a period of danger, and upon the very first applica- 
tion, and in return for no more than kind words, give, what we 
want to give, security to the empire." 

O'Coimell then referred with singular power and feli- 
city, and with convincing truth, to the various periods of 
Irish history at which some justice was done to Catho- 
lic.-, because England was in peril, and found it hest 
to avoid domestic dissension when she had to contend 
with foreigners. 

Then he reverted to the occasions in which Catholic 
c]aims were treated with contempt because England was 
prosperous — 

"In 1792, the Catholics urged their claims, as they had more 
than once done before. But the era was inauspicious to them, for 
England was in prosperity. On the Continent, the confederation of 
German princes and the assemblage of the French princes, with their 
royalist followers,. the treaty of Piluitz, and the army of the King of 
Prussia, gave hope of crushing and extinguishing France and her 
liberties for ever. At that moment the Catholic petition was 
brought before Parliament ; it was not even suffered, according to 
the course of ordinary courtesy, to lie on the table ; it was rejected 
with indignation and with contempt. The head of the La Touche 
family, which has since produced so many first-rate Irishmen, then 
retained that Huguenot hatred for Catholics which is still cherished 
by Saurin, the Attorney- General for Ireland. La Touche proposed 
that the petition should be rejected, and it was rejected by a 
majority of 200 to only 13. 

" Fortune, however, changed. The invasion of the Prussians waa 
unsuccessful ; the French people, worshipping the name as if it 
were the reality of liberty, chased the Duke of Brunswick from their 






' 



soil ; the King of Prussia, in the Luttrel style, sold the pass ; the 
German princes were confounded, and the French princes scattered ; 
Dumourier gained the battle of Jemappes, and conquered the Aus- 
trian Netherlands ; the old governments of Europe were struck 
with consternation and dismay, and we arrived at the fourth, and 
hitherto the last stage of Emancipation ; for, after those events 
in 1793, was passed that Act which gave us many valuable political 

5H> VI rights — many important privileges. 

Iff! "The Parliament — the same men who, in 1792, would not suffer 

our petition to lie on the table — the men who, in 1792, treated us 
with contempt, in the short space of a few months granted us the 
elective franchise. In 1792, we were despised and rejected; in 
1793, we were flattered and favoured. The reason was obvious ; in 
the year 1792, England was safe ; in 1793, she wanted security — 
and security she found in the emancipation of the Catholics, partial 
jf^ji though it was and limited. The spirit of republican phrenzy was 

abroad ; the enthusiasm for liberty, even to madness, pervaded the 
public mind." 

He followed up this exposure of English vacillation by 
showing the true path to security. 

"The plain path to safety — to security — lies before her. Let 
Irishmen be restored to their inherent rights, and she may laugh to 
scorn the shock of every tempest. The arrangements which the 
abolition of the national debt may require will then be effectuated, 
without convulsion or disturbance ; and no foreign foe will dare to 
pollute the land of freemen and of brothers. 

" They have, however, struck out another resource in England : 
they have resolved, it is said, to resort to the protection of Orange 
Lodges. That system which has been declared by judges from the 
bench to be illegal and criminal, and found by the experience of the 
people to be bigoted and bloody — the Orange system, which has 
marked its progress in blood, in murder, and in massacre — the 
Orange system, which has desolated Ireland, and would have con- 






verted her into a solitude but for the interposing hand of Cora- 
wa llis — the Orange system, with all its sanguinary horrors, is, they 
say, to be adopted in England ! 

" Its prominent patron, we are told, is Lord Kenyon or Lord 
Yarmouth ; the first an insane religionist of the Welsh Jumper sect, 
who, bounding in the air, imagines he can lay hold of a limb of the 
Deity, like Macbeth, snatching at the air-drawn dagger of his fancy! 
He would be simply ridiculous, but for the mischievous malignity 
of his holy piety, which desires to convert Papists from their errors 
through the instrumentality of daggers of steel. Lord Kenyon may 
enjoy his ample sinecures as he pleases, but his folly should not 
goad to madness the people of Ireland. 



" You know full well that I do not exaggerate the horrors which 
the Orange system has produced, and must produce, if revived 
from authority in this country. I< have, in some of the hireling 
prints of London, read, under the guise of opposing the adoption 
of the Orange system, the most unfounded praises of the conduct 
of the Irish Orangemen. They were called loyal and worthy and 
constitutional. Let me hold them, up in their true light. The 
first authentic fact in their history occurs in 1795. It is to be 
found in the address of Lord Gosford, to a meeting of the magis- 
trates of the county of Armagh, convened by his lordship, as gover- 
nor of that county, on the 28th of December 1795. Allow me to 
read the following passage from that address : — 

" ' Gentlemen, Having requested your attendance here this day, 
it becomes my duty to state the grounds upon which I thought it 
advisable to propose this meeting ; and at the same time to submit 
to your consideration a plan which occurs to me as most likely to 
check the enormities that have already brought disgrace upon this 
country, and may soon reduce it into deep distress. 

" ' It is no secret that a persecution, accompanied with all the 
circumstances of ferocious cruelty,which have in all ages distinguished 
that dreadful calamity, is now raging in this country. Neither age 



CRUELTY OF ORANGEMEN. 



Q 



nor sex, nor even acknowledged innocence, as to any guilt in the 
late disturbances, is sufficient to excite mercy, much less to afford 
protection. 

" ' The only crime which the wretched objects of this ruthless 
persecution are charged with, is a crime, indeed, of easy proof; it 
is simply a profession of the Roman Catholic faith, or an intimate 
connection with a person professing this faith. A lawless banditti 
have constituted themselves judges of this new species of delin- 
quency, and the sentence they have denounced is equally concise 
and terrible. It is nothing less than a confiscation of all property, 
and an immediate banishment. It would be extremely painful, and 
surely unnecessary, to detail the horrors that are attendant on the 
execution of so rude and tremendous a proscription — one that cer- 
tainly exceeds, in the comparative number of those it consigns to 
ruin and misery, every example that ancient and modern history 
can supply ; for where have we heard, or in what story of human 
cruelties have we read, of half the inhabitants of a populous coun- 
try deprived, at one blow, of the means as well as the fruits of 
their industry, and driven, in the midst of an inclement season, to 
seek a shelter for themselves and their helpless families, where 
chance may guide them 1 

" ' This is no exaggerated picture of the horrid scenes that are 
now acting in this country.' 

" Here is the first fact in the history of the Orangemen. They 
commenced their course by a persecution, with every circumstance 
of ferocious cruelty. These lawless banditti, as Lord Gosford called 
them, showed no mercy to age, nor sex, nor acknowledged inno- 
cence. And this is not the testimony of a man favourable to the 
rights of those persecuted Catholics ; he avows his intolerance in 
the very address of which I have read you a part ; and though shocked 
at these Orange enormities, he still exults in his hostility to eman- 
cipation. 

" After this damning fact from the early history of the Orange- 
men, who can think with patience on the revival or extension of 



w 



®m 



this murderous association t It is not, it ought not, it cannot he 
endured, that such an association should be restored to its power of 
mischief by abandoned and unprincipled courtiers. But I have 
got in my possession a document which demonstrates the vulgar 
and lowly origin, as well as the traitorous and profligate purpose of 
this Orange society. It has been repeatedly sworn to in judicial 
proceedings, that the original oath of an Orangeman was an oath 
to exterminate the Catholics." 7 

He then proceeded to read some extracts from a book 
printed, for the use of the Orange Lodges, by William 
M'Kenzie in 1810. He continued: — 

" I can demonstrate from this document that the Orange is a 
vulgar, a profligate, and a treasonable association. To prove it 



? At a time when vigorous efforts are being made to extend the Orange 
associations both in England and Ireland, it would be well that Protest- 
ants as well as Catholics learned more of their true principles. At the 
Orange demonstration in Manchester on the 12th of July 1872, as re- 
ported by the Standard, the following resolution was moved and seconded 
with acclamation : — 

" That the admission of Roman Catholics to Parliament by the Act 
of 1829 has led to the corruption of political parties, by inducing 
political leaders to sacrifice the safeguards of Protestantism for the sup- 
port of Roman Catholics, whose one great purpose is the supremacy of 
their own Church — a course which, if permitted to continue, must be 
destructive of that civil and religious liberty winch has so long been the 
glory of England. We protest against such conduct, and we pledge 
ourselves to oppose by every means in our power all such conces- 
sions." 

From this it is evident that, however these persons may have advanced 
in general civilisation, they have yet to learn that religious liberty 
means liberty to all. The liberty they demand is the liberty to 
exercise intolerance. In the north of Ireland, on the same day, a gal- 
lant colonel made an exhibition of his wife's Orange gown before an 
amu?cfl. if not an appreciative audience. He said, " He was true to hia 




treasonable, I read the following, which is given as the first of their 
secret articles : — 'That we will bear true allegiance to his Majesty, 
his heirs and successors, so long as he or they support the Protestant 
ascendency.' The meaning is obvious, the Orangeman will be loyal 
just so long as he pleases. The traitor puts a lilsiit to his allegiance, 
suited to what he shall fancy to be meant by the words ' Protestant 
Ascendency.' If the legislature presumes to alter the law for the 
Irish Catholics, as it did for the Hanoverian Catholics, then is the 
Orangeman clearly discharged from his allegiance, and allowed, at 
the first convenient opportunity, to raise a civil war ; and this is 
what is called a loyal association. Oh ! how different from the 
unconditional, the ample, the conscientious oath of allegiance of the 
Irish Catholic ! " 

O'Connell then read some of the other " secret resolu- 
tions," which we omit, and pass to the — 

"'8th Secret Article. — An Orangeman is to keep a brother's 
secrets as his own, unless in case of murder, treason, and perjury, and 
of his own free will.' See what an abundant crop of crimes the 
Orangeman is bound to conceal for his brother Orangeman. Killing 
a Papist may, in his eyes, be no murder, and he might be bound to 
conceal that ; but he is certainly bound to conceal all cases of riot, 
maiming, wounding, stabbing, theft, robbing, rape, housebreaking, 



colours ; and when evil times came on Ireland he was turned out of the 
magistracy of the county because his wife wore an Orange gown. As 
there were ladies present, they might be curious to see the Orange gown, 
and he would have no objection to produce it." (The chairman, amid 
laughter and cheers, produced from a leather bag some square yards of 
silk — a tolerably well-preserved relic of the lady to whom he referred.) 
After all, it was a harmless exhibition of partisan feeling. Of course, it 
passed unnoticed by the English press ; but if a Catholic had made a 
similar exhibition, some very strong language would have been used to 
describe his idiocy, and the affair would have been reported from John 
0' Groat's House to Land's End. 



house-burning, and every other human villany, save murder, treason, 
and perjury. These are the good, the faithful, the loyal subjects. 
They may, without provocation or excuse, attack and assault — give 
the first assault, mind, when they are certain no brother can be 
brought to trouble. They may feloniously and burglariously break 
into dwellings, and steal, take, and carry away whatever they will 
please to call arms and ammunition. And, if the loyalty of a 
brother tempts him to go a little further, and to plunder any other 
articles, or to burn the house, or to violate female honour, his 
brother spectators of his crime are bound by their oaths to screen it 
for ever from detection and justice. I know some men of better 
minds have been, in their horror of revolutionary fury, seduced 
into these Lodges, or have unthinkingly become members of them ; 
but the spirit, the object, and the consequences of this murderous 
and plundering association, are not the less manifest. 

" I do not calumniate them ; for I prove the history of their 
foundation and origin by the unimpeachable testimony of Viscount 
Gosford, and I prove their principles by their own secret articles, 
the genuineness of which no Orangeman can or will deny. If it 
were denied, I have the means of proving it beyond a doubt. And 
when such principles are avowed, when so much is acknowledged 
and printed, oh, it requires but little knowledge of human nature 
to ascertain the enormities which must appear in the practice of 
those who have confessed so much of the criminal nature of their 
principles. 

" There is, however, one consolation. It is to be found in 
their ninth secret article — ' No Roman Catholic can be admitted 
on any account.' I thank them for it, I rejoice at it ; no Roman 
Catholic deserves to be admitted ; no Roman Catholic would desire 
to belong to a society permitting aggression and violence, when safe 
and prudent, permitting robbery to a certain extent, and authorising 
treason upon a given contingency. 

"And now let me ask, What safety, what security can the 
minions of the court promise to themselves from the encourage- 



BEWARE OF ORANGEMEN. 



381 



ment of this association ? They do want security, and from the 
Catholics they can readily have it ; and you, my friends, may 
•want security, not from the open attacks of the Orangeman, for 
against those the law and your own courage will protect you, 
but of their secret machinations you ought to be warned. They 
will endeavour, nay, I am most credibly assured, that at this 
moment their secret emissaries are endeavouring to seduce you into 
acts of sedition and treason, that they may betray and destroy you. 
Recollect what happened little more than twelve months ago, when 
the board detected and exposed a similar delusion in Dublin. Re- 
collect the unpunished conspiracy which was discovered at Limerick ; 
unpunished and unprosecuted was the author. Recollect the Mayor's 
Constable of Kilkenny, and he is still in office, though he admini- 
stered an oath of secrecy, and gave money to his spy to treat the 
country people to liquor and seduce them to treason. I do most 
earnestly conjure you to be on your guard, no matter in what shape 
any man may approach who suggests disloyalty to you, no matter of 
what religion he may affect to be, no matter what compassion he may 
express for your sufferings, or what promises he may make ; believe 
me that any man who may attempt to seduce you into any secret 
association or combination whatsoever, that suggests to you any 
violation of the law whatsoever, that dares to utter in your presence 
the language of sedition or of treason, depend upon it — take my 
word for it, and I am your sincere friend — that every such man is 
the hired emissary and the spy of your Orange enemies — that his 
real object is to betray you, to murder you under the forms of a 
judicial trial, and to ruin your country for your guilt. If, on the 
contrary, you continue at this trying moment peaceful, obedient, 
and loyal ; if you avoid every secret association, and every incite- 
ment to turbulence ; if you persevere in your obedience to the laws, 
and in fidelity to the Crown and Constitution, your emancipation is 
certain and not distant, and your country will be restored to you ; 
your natural friends and protectors will seek the redress of your 
grievances in and from Parliament, and Ireland will be again free 






O'CONNELL'S LOVE OF JUSTICE. 



and happy. If you suffer yourself to be seduced by these Orange 
betrayers, the members of the board will not be bound to resist your 
crimes with their lives ; you will bring disgrace and ruin on our 
cause ; you will destroy yourselves and your families, and perpetuate 
the degradation and disgrace of your native land. But my fears 
are vain. I know your good sense ; I rely on your fidelity ; you 
will continue to baffle your enemies ; you will continue faithful and 
peaceable ; and thus shall you preserve yourselves, promote your 
cause, and give security to the empire." 

Two points should be specially noted in the conclusion 
of this masterly address : O'Connell's love of justice, 
which impelled him to admit that there were members, 
even of Orange lodges, who were of better minds than their 
associates, and his determined out-spoken abhorrence of 
anything even approaching to secret combinations, how- 
ever speciously such combinations might be framed or 
excused. 

With some few, and not very honourable exceptions, those 
men who have distinguished themselves most in public 
life have been remarkable for the practice of domestic 
virtue. O'Connell's attachment to his wife has already 
been mentioned. She was certainly not a woman of any 
remarkable intellectual calibre, but she had sufficient 
appreciation of her husband's value to give him the just 
award of her affectionate approbation in his career. When 
separated, as they were frequently, they kept up an affec- 
tionate correspondence, and Mrs O'Connell helped the 
Liberator by her earnest sympathy in his pursuits when 



I 



she could not help him by any personal co-operation. As 
his sons grew up, they, too, took their share in his work 
with more or less ability. 

But O'Connell belonged to the public. He gave his life 
to Ireland ; unhappy, indeed, will Ireland ever be if she 
forgets the debt of gratitude which she owes to her most 
illustrious son! Other men have fought for her, or died 
for her. Let her honour them. Those who are faithful 
to unfortunate Ireland deserve the praise which men re- 
ceive who lead a forlorn hope. O'Connell led Ireland 
on until she won the noblest victory on record, because it 
was the victory of mental power over brute force. When 
the memory of O'Connell grows dim in Irish hearts — but 
I may not pen the words ; his memory never will grow 
dim while there is an Irishman with heart to love, or in- 
tellect to cherish it. 

It is to be regretted, however, that some of those very 
persons who are most sensibly benefited by O'Connell are 
not grateful to him for the concessions he obtained for 
them. Their ingratitude arises principally from ignorance 
and partly from prejudice. From ignorance, because those 
English Catholics, who look with something like contempt 
on O'Connell's career, are seldom well informed, or fully 
informed as to his history ; from prejudice, because we 
believe that where this dislike exists, and where we know 
it now to exist, it arises from a prejudice against O'Connell, 
because at times neither his words nor his manner were 




exactly iu accordance with conventional rules of etiquette. 
The very position of English Catholics of the upper class 
has made them tenaciously touchy on those subjects. It 
would seem as if they forgot that some of those who have 
done the noblest work for God on earth have not been what 
the world calls gentlemen. 

Yet after a careful perusal of all O'ConnelPs speeches, it 
is difficult to find more than a few words here and there, 
which, in a fastidious audience would have been better 
unsaid ; and if those words or expressions were compared 
with others which have been uttered from the bench and 
in the senate at the present day, we think that a jury would 
award a verdict of not guilty by comparison to O'Connell. It 
should be remembered also tbat Berkeley described the 
Irish aristocracy of the day as " Goths in ignorance, spend- 
thrifts, drunkards, and debauchees." It was evidently not 
from such persons that O'Connell could learn courtly 
manners. 

A rough and ready style was best suited to O'Connell's 
work, and we suspect he cultivated it purposely. Roche 8 
gives an account, which, he says, he received from the 
Liberator himself, of the care with which he prepared some 
of his speeches, and undoubtedly there are passages in 



8 Roche's Essays, vol. ii. p. 103. He says — " His earliest exhibition 
as an orator at Cork was on the 2d September 1811, at the first great 
Catholic meeting held there, and of which he was chairman. He made 
a splendid speech of two hours' duration, which he passed the night in 



many of them which are of the very highest order of 
rhetorical composition. 

Theil, in his " Sketches of the Irish Bar," has given an 
admirable sketch of O'Connell's daily life when in the 
zenith of his fame. 

He says : — 

" If any of you, my English readers, being a stranger in Dublin, 
should chance on your return on a winter's morning from one of the 
small and early parties of that raking metropolis— that is to Bay, 
between the hours of five and six o'clock— to pass along the south' 
side of Merrion Square, you will not fail to observe that, among 
those splended mansions, there is one evidently tenanted by a person 
whose habits differ materially from those of his fashionable neigh- 
bours. The half-opened parlour shutter, and the light within, 
announce that some one dwells there whose time is too precious to 
permit him to regulate his rising with the sun's. Should your 
curiosity tempt you to ascend the steps, and, under cover of the 
dark, to reconnoitre the interior, you will see a tall, able-bodied 
man standing at a desk, and immersed in solitary occupation. 
Upon the wall in front of him there hangs a crucifix. From this 
and from the calm attitude of the person within, and from a certain 
monastic rotundity about his neck and shoulders, your first impres- 
sion will be that he must be some pious dignitary of the Church of 
Rome absorbed in his matin devotions. But this conjecture will be 
rejected almost as soon as formed. No sooner can the eye take in 
the other furniture of the apartment— the bookcases clogged with 



rV 

M 



M 



ES 



preparing for the press, and which I saw the next morning fairly written 
in his bold flowing hand, exactly as he had pronounced it, though he 
certainly could not have gotten it entirely by heart, for he adverted in 
its course to various matters of the discussion." 

2b 



w. ., 




tomes in plain calfskin binding, and blue-covered octavos that lie 
about on the tables and the floor, the reams of manuscript in oblong 
folds and begirt with crimson tape — than it becomes evident that 
the party meditating amidst such objects must be thinking far more 
of the law than of the prophets. 

" He is, unequivocally, a barrister, but apparently of that homely, 
chamber keeping, plodding cast who labour hard to make up by 
assiduity what they want in wit — who are up and stirring before the 
bird of the morning has sorinded the retreat to the wandering 
spectre, and are already brain-deep in the dizzying vortex of mort- 
gages, and cross-remainders, and mergers, and remitters, while his 
clients, still laped in sweet oblivion of the law's delay, are fondly 
dreaming that their cause is peremptorily set down for a final hear- 
ing. Having come to this conclusion, you push on for home, bless- 
ing your stars on the way that you are not a lawyer, and sincerely 
compassionating the sedentary drudge whom you have just detected 
in the performance of his cheerless toil. But should you happen, 
in the course of the same day, to stroll down to the Four Courts, 
you will be not a little surprised to find the object of your pity 
miraculously transferred from the severe recluse of the morning into 
one of the most bustling, important, and joyous personages in that 
busy scene. There you will be sure to see him, his countenance 
braced up and glistening with health and spirits, with a huge, 
plethoric bag, which his robust arms can scarcely contain, clasped 
with paternal fondness to his breast, and environed by a living 
palisade of clients and attorneys, with outstretched necks, and 
mouths and ears agape to catch up any chance opinion that may be 
coaxed out of him in a colloquial way ; or listening to what the 
client relishes still better — for in no event can they be slided to a 
bill of costs — the counsellor's burst of jovial and familiar humour ; 
or, when he touches on a sadder strain, his prophetic assurances that 
the hour of Ireland's redemption is at hand. You perceive at once 
that you have lighted upon a great popular advocate ; and, if you 
take the trouble to follow his movements for a couple of hours 







tb rough the several courts, you will not fail to discover the qualities 
that have made him so — his legal competency, his business-like 
habits, his sanguine temperament — which renders him not merely 
the advocate, but the partisan of his client — his acuteness, his 
fluency of thought and language, his unconquerable good humour, 
and, above all, his versatility. By the hour of three, when the 
judges usually rise, you will have seen him go through a quantity 
of business, the preparation for and performance of which would be 
sufficient to wear down an ordinar}' constitution ; and you naturally 
suppose that the remaining portion of the day must, of necessity, 
be devoted to recreation or repose. But here again you will be 
mistaken ; for, should you feel disposed, as you return from the 
courts, to drop iuto any of the public meetings that are almost 
daily held — for some purpose, or to no purpose — in Dublin, to a 
certainty you will find the counsellor there before you, the presiding 
spirit of the scene ; riding in the whirlwind and directing the storm 
of popular debate with a strength of lungs and a redundancy of 
animation as if he had that moment started fresh for the labours of 
the day. There he remains until, by dint of strength or dexterity, 
he has carried every point ; and from thence, if you would see him 
to the close of the day's eventful history, you will, in all likelihood, 
have to follow him to a public dinner ; from which, after having 
acted a conspicuous part in the turbulent festivity of the evening, 
and thrown off half-a-dozen speeches in praise of Ireland, he retires 
at a late hour, to repair the wear and tear of the day by a short 
interval of repose, and is sure to be found, before dawn-break 
next morning, at his solitary post, recommencing the routine 
of his restless existence. Now, any one who has once seen in 
the preceding situation the able-bodied, able minded, acting, 
talking, multifarious person I have just been describing, has no 
occasion to inquire his name — he may be assured that he is and can 
be no other than ' Kerry's pride and Minister's glory ' — the far- 
famed and indefatigable Daniel O'Connell. His frame is tall, ex- 
panded, and muscular — precisely such as befits a man of the people; 





for the physical classes ever look with double confidence and affec- 
tion upon a leader who represents in his own person the qualities 
upon which they rely. In his face he has been equally fortunate — 
it is extremely comely. The features are at once soft and manly : 
the florid glow of health and a sanguine temperament are diffused 
over the whole countenance, which is national in the outline, and 
beaming with national emotion ; the expression is open and con 
fiding, and inviting confidence ; there is not a trace of malignity or 
wile — if there were, the bright and sweet blue eyes, the most kindly 
and honest-looking that can be conceived, would repel the imputa- 
tion. These popular gifts of nature O'Connell has not neglected to 
set off by his external carriage and deportment — or, perhaps, I 
should rather say, that the same hand which has moulded the 
exterior, has supersaturated the inner man with a fund of restless 
propensity which it is quite beyond his power, as it is certainly 
beside his inclination, to control. A large portion of this is neces- 
sarily expended upon his legal avocations ; but the labours of the 
most laborious of professions cannot tame him to repose. After de- 
ducting the daily drains of the study and the courts, there remains 
an ample residuum of animal spirits and ardour for occupation, 
which go to form a distinct and, I might say, a predominant char- 
acter — the political chieftain. The existence of this overweening 
vivacity is conspicuous in O'Connell's manners and movements ; and 
being a popular, and more particularly a national quality, greatly 
recommends him to the Irish people — mobilitate viget ; body and 
soul are in a state of permanent insurrection. See him in the 
streets, and you perceive at once that he is a man who has sworn 
that his country's wrongs shall be avenged. A Dublin jury (if 
judiciously selected) would find his very gait and gestures to be 
high treason by construction, so explicitly do they enforce the 
national sentiment of ' Ireland her own — or the world in a blaze ! ' 
As he marches to court, he shoulders his umbrella as if it were a 
pike. He flings out one factious foot before the other as if he had 
already burst his bonds, and was kicking the Protestant ascendency 



SACRIFICE OF PLEASURE. 



before him ; while ever and anon, a democratic, broad-shouldered 
roll of the upper man is manifestly an indignant effort to shuffle off 
-the oppression of seven hundred years. This intensely national 
sensibility is the prevailing peculiarity in O'Connell's character ; 
for it is not only when abroad and in the popular gaze that Irish 
affairs seem to press upon his heart — the same Erin-go-bragh 
feeling follows him into the most technical details of his forensic 
occupations. Give him the most dry and abstract position of law 
to support — the most remote that imagination can conceive from 
the violation of the Irish Parliament, and ten to one but he 
will contrive to interweave a patriotic episode upon those examples 
of British domination. The people are never absent from his 
thoughts. He tosses up a bill of exceptions to a judge's charge in 
the name of Ireland, and pockets a special retainer with the air of 
a man that doats upon his country. There is, perhaps, some share 
of exaggeration in all this ; but much less, I do believe, than is 
generally suspected, and I apprehend that he would scarcely pass 
for a patriot without it ; for, in fact, he has been so successful, and 
looks so contented, and his elastic, unbroken spirits are so disposed 
to bound and frisk for very joy— in a word, he has naturally so bad 
a face for a grievance, that his political sincerity might appear 
equivocal, were there not some clouds of patriotic grief or indigna- 
tion to temper the sunshine that is for ever bursting through 
thein." 

It must have been no small sacrifice to a man who 
enjoyed society as O'Connell did, to absent himself from 
social circles. The resolution of the man's character was 
as unselfish in this as in his life-long devotion to the one 
pursuit. It was, indeed, a part of his pursuit. 

As a raconteur he was probably unequalled. With the 
best of memories, with a quick wit to seize the point of 
any incident, and with an admirable manner of relating 



m 



m 




it, lie could not fail to take pleasure in the exercise of his 
gift, as well as to give pleasure to others. Let Ireland 
remember, when slie counts up her debt of gratitude to 
O'Connell, how many nights he deprived him>elf of neces- 
sary rest, .and how many days he deprived himself of 
that relaxation, which, for most men in his position, and 
undertaking his labours, would have been considered a 
necessity rather than an indulgence. 

His bar anecdotes were amongst the most amusing. 
Several are recorded which relate to the well-known Jerry 
Keller : — 

" Jerry," said O'Connell, " was an instance of great waste of 
talent. He was the son of a poor farmer near Kanturk, named 
Keleher, which Jerry anglicised into Keller when he went to the 
bar. He was an excellent classical scholar, and had very consider- 
able natural capacity ; but although he had a good deal of business 
at the bar, his success was far from being what he might have 
attained had he given his whole soul to his profession. His readi- 
ness of retort was great. Baron Smith once tried to annoy him on 
his change of name at a bar dinner. They were talking of the 
Irish language. ' Your Irish name, Mr Keller,' said the baron, 
' is Diarmuid ua Cealleachair' ' It is,' answered Jerry, nothing 
daunted, ' and yours is Laimh Gabha.' There was a great laugh at 
the baron's expense — a sort of thing that nobody likes." 

" Another time," said O'Connell, " when the bar were dining 
together on a Friday, a blustering young barrister named Norcott, 
of great pretension with but slender materials to support it, 
observed that Jerry was eating fish instead of meat, and by way of 
jeering Jerry (who had been originally a Catholic), said to him : 
' So you won't eat meat 1 Why I did not think, Jerry, you had so 
much of the Pope in your belly.' ' For all the meat in the market,' 



s* 






M 




LORD CLARE. 



said Jerry, ' I would not have as much of the Pretender in my head 
as you have.' " 

Jerry was a member of a famous convivial society who 
denominated themselves the " Monks of the Screw." Lord 
Avonmore was a " monk " also, and as long as he lived 
Jerry's bag was full. After the deatli of this nobleman 
he sank into poverty, yet he still went circuit, and held 
his place as senior at the mess, where his humour never 
deserted him, though it became somewhat embittered by 
his misfortunes. 

Of Lord Clare, O'Connell used to tell the following anec- 
dote : — 

" Lord Clare's enmity to Ireland," said O'Connell, " was once 
nearly ended by an assassin. In 1794, he was carrying a bill 
through the Irish Parliament for compelling the accountant of the 
Court of Exchequer to return his accounts whenever called upon by 
the court. These summary accounts would have been very incon- 
venient to Baron Power, who, as junior baron, filled the office of 
accountant. He lived extravagantly — making use of the money of 
the public that came into his hands, and looking to future good luck 
to enable him to reckon with the owners. The bill would have been 
his ruin ; and after many ineffectual efforts to dissuade Lord Clare 
from pressing it, he at last resolved in a fit of desperation to assas- 
sinate him. So he drove to Ely Place with a brace of loaded pistols 
in bis pocket, and asked to see Lord Clare, who providentially was 
from home. Baron Power then resolved on suicide, and ordered 
his coachman to drive him along the North Wall. When he had 
got to a considerable distance out of town he quitted the carriage, 
desired the coachman, to await his return, and walked on alone 
towards the Pigeon House. He tied his hands together in 
order to deprive himself of the power of swimming, and jumped 



into the sea from the pier. It was afterwards remarked as 
curious that he walked off to drown himself using an umbrella, as 
the day was wet. One would think the sprinkling of a shower 
would not much incommode a fellow who was resolved on a watery 
death. Think of a man going to drown himself with an umbrella 
to keep out the wet. 

"Shortly after, Crosbie Morgan, one of the oddest of odd attor- 
neys, also drowned himself. The ballad-mongers shouted their 
accounts of these events through Dublin, crying -out: 'Great times 
for Ireland! One judge drowned! One attorney drowned!' 
They had also : ' Last speech and dying words of Crosbie Morgan!' 
which instead of ending with the approved finish of the penitent 
declaration of Catholic criminals — namely, 'I die an unworthy 
member of the Church of Home, ' ended thus: ' I die an unworthy 
mongrel of neither church.' 

" ' Crosbie Morgan,' said O'Connell, ' was a very eccentric fellow. 
He probably made more money than any other attorney of his time. 
He had eleven clerks in his office, and every clerk was an attorney. 
Great as were his gains, his expenditure was greater. Whenever he 
travelled to Dublin he used to engage all the post-chaises at every 
inn where he slept along the road ; and if he found any gentlemen 
of his acquaintance going to town, he invariably gave them seats 
gratis. His own personal suite always filled two or three of the 
carriages.' 

"II ad Baron Power,' continued O'Connell, reverting to Lord Clare, 
'murdered Fitzgibbon, Pitt would have found much more difficulty 
in carrying the Union. Castlereagh, although as vile, shameless, 
and indefatigable a tool as ever corruption had, could not, unaided 
by the commanding energy of Clare, have succeeded so well in the 
dirty work. Clare had great intellectual powers. He lived at a 
peiii id fertile in monsters — Clare was a monster. He was a kind of 
petticoat Robespierre. His father was a barrister of considerable 
eminence. Old Fitzgibbon and his brother were the first persons 
who introduced the system of reporting the proceedings of the Eng- 



lisli law courts in the public newspapers without the authority of 
the presiding judge. They were students in the Temple at the time, 
and f.,ord Mansfield tried to put a stop to the practice, but the 
Fitzgibbons persevered and succeeded. Clare was atrociously bigoted 
against the Catholics. A Protestant friend of mine, who often 
met him at the whist parties of an old dowager, told me nothing 
could possibly exceed the contemptuous acerbity with which on 
these occasions he spoke of the Catholics. ' The scum of the earth,' 
and such like phrases, were the epithets he habitually applied to 
them.'" 

Some one having alluded to the temptation to amass large sums 
afforded by facility and security from detection, O'Connell told the 
following anecdote: " I knew a person named Rarnewell, who, 
while staying in Dublin, was commissioned by a friend in the 
country to purchase a lottery-ticket. The choice of the number 
was left to Barnewell, who accordingly selected and paid for a ticket. 
It turned up a prize of £10,000. He had the most thorough faci- 
lity for retaining the amount. All he need do was to buy his 
friend some other ticket. No one could say that he had not duly 
executed his commission. But Barnewell reasoned thus with him- 
self : ' If,' said he, ' my friend had not commissioned me to buy the 
ticket for him, I never would have bought it for myself. It there- 
fore is rightly his ; and to put myself beyond the reach of casuistry, 
I'll lodge the amount to his credit immediately, and apprise hira 
that I have done so by this night's post ; ' which honest Barne- 
well accordingly did. I recollect when I was a younker, my uncle 
gave me £300 in gold, to get changed into notes at Cotter & Kel- 
lett's bank. The clerk, through stupidity, gave me £400, of which 
£300 were in small notes, and the rest in a £100 note. I pointed 
out his blunder ; and he, in a very surly manner, and without look- 
ing at the heap of notes, insisted that I must be wrong, for that he 
never mistook. I persisted ; he was sulky and obstinate. At last 
our altercation attracted the notice of Cotter, who came over and 
asked what was the matter. I told him I had got £100 too much. 







He reckoned the money, and then took off the £100, saying. ' Now 
it is all right.' I begged he would let me retain that note, as my 
uncle was desirous to get the largest note he could ; and, I assure 
you, it was with no trifling difficulty I could prevail on the old 
gentleman to take his £100 in small notes ! " 



When O'Connell was at the Limerick assizes in 1812, 
Standish O'Grady asked O'Connell to go with him to the 
play. 

" O'Connell declined, observing that the Limerick grand jurors 
were not the pleasantest folk in the world to meet after dinner. 
O'Grady went, but soon returned. ' Dan,' said he, ' you were 
quite right. I had not been five minutes in the box, when some 
ten or a dozen noisy gentlemen came into it. It was small 
and crowded ; and, as I observed that one of the party had his 
head quite close to a peg on which I had hung my hat, I said 
very politely, " I hope, sir, my hat does not incommode you ; if it 
does, pray allow me to remove it." " Faith," said he, " you may be 
sure it does not incommode me ; for if it did, d — n me, but I 'd 
have kicked it out of the box, and yourself after it ! " So, lest the 
worthy juror should change his mind as to the necessity of such 
a vigorous measure, I quietly put my hat on, and took myself 
off.' " 

It will scarcely be expected that the Liberator would 
be an admirer of Irish parsons, however friendly he 
might be with Irish Protestants. Nor can it be said that 
their character at that period was such as to command 
respect even from their own flocks. To read prayers once 
on Sunday, if they had a congregation, was the extent of 
the ecclesiastical administration of their parishes, if, in- 
deed, we except the time spent in tithe-hunting. And 



this occupation, of which we shall say more hereafter, cer- 
tainly did not tend to increase respect for their office. 

O'Connell used to relate an amusing case in which he 
was engaged against a parson for a breach of promise of 
marriage. The lady was a Miss Fitzgerald ; the gentleman, 
Parson Hawkesworth. 

" Hawkes worth," said he, "had certainly engaged the lady's 
affections very much. He had acquired fame enough to engage her 
ambition. He was a crack preacher — had been selected to preach 
before the Lord-Lieutenant ; his name occasionally got into the 
papers, which then was not often the case with private persons ; and, 
no doubt, this notoriety had its weight in the lady's calculations. 
The correspondence read Uj on the trial was comical enough. The 
lady, it appeared, had at one period doubted his fidelity, whereupon 
the parson writes to re-assure her in these words : — ' Don't believe 
any one who says I '11 jilt you ! They lie, who say so ; and I pray 
that all such liars may be condemned to an eternity of itching 
without the benefit of scratching ! ' £3000 damages were given 
against him. He was unable to pay, and decamped to America upon 
a preaching speculation, which proved unsuccessful. He came back 
to Ireland, and married the prosecutrix/" 

Whatever may have been O'Connell's capabilities in the 
way of using language which was more forcible than ele- 
gant, there is no doubt that he fouud example in Parson 
Hawkesworth. 

The following anecdote is a specimen of the fashion in 
which justice was administered at the close of the last 
century : — 

"In the year 1798," said O'Connell, "my friend , and his 

two brothers, were taken prisoners by a magistrate who owed their 



;l 



mother £2000. The worthy justice went to that lady and said, 
' If you don't release my bond, I '11 have your sous flogged and 
hanged.' ' Sir,' answered she, ' if you were to treat me in that 
manner, you could not extort the bond from me ; and I am much 
mistaken if my sons have not at least as much firmness as their 
mother.' Fortunately Judge Day, who was a very humane man, 

went the circuit ; and as no witnesses appeared against the , 

he discharged them by proclamation. In pronouncing their dis- 
charge, Day gave the young men a sort of moral and political lecture, 
in which he congratulated them on their escape, and advised loyal 
conduct for the future. ' You have no business to lecture us, my 
lord,' said , ' as if we were guilty of disloyalty. We are per- 
fectly innocent, and are quite as loyal as your lordship. Had our 
enemies been able to establish any sort of case against us, they 
would not have failed to produce their witnesses. It is too bad 
then, my lord, to lecture us as if our conduct had in any respect 
been censurable.' Day, who was a thorough gentleman, bowed and 

said : ' You are quite right, Mr , and I was quite wrong. I 

beg your pardon.' Next morning the eldest brother was .again 
seized and thrown into jail by the machinations of the worthy 
magistrate who owed his mother money. The jailer was a savage 
brute, and took every opportunity of tormenting him. One day he 
came to his cell, and said, with a diabolical grin, ' I 've news that 
is bitter to you and pleasant to me — your two brothers have been 

hanged, and you are to be strung up to-morrow ! ' Mr was 

well enough aware of the frightful character of the times to know 
that this was at least possible. ' Is what you have told me really 
true 1 ' he asked of the jailer. ' Upon my oath, it is,' returned the 

jailer. ' Then, my man,' cried Mr , ' before I leave this world, 

I shall have the satisfaction of giving you as good a licking as ever 
man got.' So saying, he pounced upon the jailer a*id wallopped 
him awfully. The jailer screamed, and his screams attracted 

persons without, who would have fired at Mr through the 

grating in the door, only that he constantly kept the jailer between 



himself and the door. Mr continued to thrash the jailer 

until he was unable, from exhaustion, to thrash him any longer. 
The jailer then went off, and soon returned with sixty-eight pounds 
weight of irons, with which he and his assistants loaded their 
prisoner. When ironed he was laid on a bed, and the jailer beat 
him with a loaded blackthorn stick as long as he was able to stand 
over him. He then kept him forty-eight hours without food ; and 
when the commanding-officer who inspected the prison arrived, he 

was utterly astonished how Mr survived the treatment he had 

received. Finding that there was not the shadow of any accusation 
agaiiist him, that officer set him free upon his own responsibility. 
What times ! " exclaimed O'Connell after he had narrated this in- 
cident. " What a scene ! The prisoner thrashing the jailer, and 
the jailer thrashing his prisoner ! What a country in which such 
things could be enacted ! " 9 






" We may be thankful that there is no parallel for such circumstances 
in Ireland at the present day ; but we cannot forget that equal, if not 
greater, atrocities have been committed recently under British rule in 
Jamaica and in India ; yet the Irish are spoken and written of as if they 
were still a nation of savages, and as if England should be their model. 
We quote the following from the Natiuyi, 20th July 1872. While Eng- 
land gives no better example, it can scarcely expect the Irish peasant to 
believe it a safe guide. 

" One of our weekly London contemporaries took genial occasion to 
speak of the Irish people— it was only last Saturday— as 'one of the 
inferior races for whom we'— bold Britons— 'are morally bound to have 
all compassion and commiseration.' Side by side with this paternal 
outburst of sympathy for our inferiority, the same journal condenses the 
list of the criminal calendar for the previous seven days, which is well 
worth pondering. The list comprises the murder of a woman at Dart- 
ford ; a case of murder at Norfolk (sentence of death passed) ; a trigamy 
at Durham ; a manslaughter at Warwick; an attempt at murder at the 
same place ; a murder at Southsea ; a suicide in Dorsetshire ; a murder 
at Chorley ; an infanticide in Shropshire ; a stabbing case in Yorkshire; 
a murder and suicide at Wakefield ; assaults by drunken boys in Cler- 



¥A i 




A SHARP YOUTH. 



The Dublin Evening Post was then the liberal paper of 
the day. During the war the latest news, old as it might 
he, was as eagerly sought for as the last telegram at the 
present time. The celebrated John Magee, of whom more 
hereafter, was the proprietor. In connection with this 
paper O'Connell used to tell an amusing anecdote : — 

" One day during the war James Connor and I dined at Mr 
Mabony's, in Dublin, and after dinner we heard the news-vendors, 
as usual, calling out, ' The Post! The Dublin Evening Post ! Three 
packets in to-night's Post ! ' The arrival of the packets was at that 
time irregular, and eagerly looked for. We all were impatient for 
the paper, and Mahony gave a fivepenny piece to his servant, a 
Kerry lad, and told him to go down and buy the Fust. The boy 
returned in a minute with a Dublin Evening Post a fortnight old. 
The roguish news-vendor had palmed off an old newspaper on the 
unsuspecting Kerry tiger. Mr Mahony stormed, Connor and I 
laughed, and Connor said, ' I wonder, gossoon, how you let the 
fellow cheat you ] Has not your master a hundred times told you 

kenwell ; ' disgusting assaults by a Scripture reader' in Southwark, and 
a host of robberies which we have not time, to particularise ; a man- 
slaughter in Smithfield ; a murder at Uxbridge ; a double murder in 
Hoxton ; a murder in Marylebone ; a manslaughter at Willenhall ; the 
discovery of three dead bodies in Kentish-town ; a murder at Leeds ; 
an attempted murder in Clerkenwell ; a suicide at Dover ; and, finally, 
an atrocious case of murder in Carmarthenshire ! In the Irish news of 
the same journal the week's chronicle of Irish crime cuts a poor figure 
by the side of its English and more enterprising relative. It sets forth 
with deadly precision the report of an attempted agrarian outrage in 
Meath, and the sending of a threatening letter to Sir Arthur Guinness, 
and there it ends. On the whole, we are not ashamed of the comparison, 
and we cheerfully acknowledge our inferiority — in crime only — to a 
people whose unbridled passions and murderous instincts have penned 
this blood-red chronicle of atrocities within the brief space of one week ! " 



■La 



that the dry papers are always old and good for nothing, and that 
new papers are always wet from the printing-office 1 Here 's another 
fivepenny. Be off now, and take care to bring us in a wet Post.' 
' Oh, never you mind the fi'penny, sir,' said the boy, ' I '11 get the 
paper without it ; ' and he darted out of the room, while Mahony 
cried out, ' Hang that young blockhead, he '11 blunder the business 
again.' But in less than five minutes the lad re-entered with a 
fresh, wet paper. We were all surprised, and asked him how he 
managed to get it without money. ' Oh, the aisiest way in life, 
your honour,' said the urchin ; ' I just took the dry old Post, and 
cried it down* the street a bit — Dublin Evening Post! Dublin 
Evening Post ! and a fool of a gentleman meets me at the corner, 
and buys my ould dry paper. So I whips across to a newsman I 
sees over the way, and buys this fine, fresh new Post for your honour 
with the money I got for the ould one.' " 

But, however O'Connell may have enjoyed bar-society 
and bar-jokes, there can be no question that home, as he 
considered Danynane Abbey, was the place he loved best. 
We do not like to think how sorrowful his heart must have 
been when he looked at it for the last time. 

Danynane House is situated close to a little bay, which 
is separated from the harbour of Ballinskilligs by a rocky 
promontory called the Abbey Island. Here are the ruins 
already described, and of which we have given an illustra- 
tion. Many of the O'Connell family lie here, taking their 
long rest after the troubled life of the good old times. 

The coast is wild and grand ; for the Atlantic waves dash 
in summer and winter in great waves on the rock-bound 
shore. Until the year 1839, when the new road from 
Cahirciveen was completed, men were employed with 



ropes to drag the carriages along some four or five miles of 
road, which was too precipitous for any other mode of 
transit. 

" The house is sheltered to the north and west by mountains, 
ranging from 1500 to 2000 feet in height. On the east, the view 
is bounded by a chain of high rocks, that divide the bay of Darry- 
nane from that of Kenmare. Close to the house is a thriving plan- 
tation called the shrubbery, covering some ten or twelve acres of a 
most rocky and irregular tract, through the irregularities of which 
there are many very pretty winding walks. In the midst of this 
shrubbery, perched high aloft upon an ivied rock, is a small circular 
turret, commanding, over the tops of the young trees, a view of the 
ocean and of the neighbouring hills. To this turret, Mr O'Connell 
frequently retired to cogitate in solitude over his future political 
movements. He had also a favourite walk in the garden, which is 
picturesquely situated amongst rocks, and contains some of the finest 
old hollies I have ever seen. 

" Darrynane House possesses tolerable accommodation, although 
it often proved scarcely sufficient for the numbers attracted by the 
hospitable habits and political celebrity of the owner. It was built 
at different periods, and without the slightest regard to any uniform 
plan of architecture ; a room was added whenever there arose a 
demand for increased accommodation ; so that the whole mass pre- 
sents a curious cluster of small buildings of different dates, heights, 
and sizes." 

We shall let Mr O'Neill Daunt describe O'Connell at 

home : — 

" On the third or fourth morning after my arrival at Darrynane, 
I was summoned by Mr O'Connell to accompany the hunting party. 
It was not quite six o'clock — the morning was clear and bright, 
and gave promise of a beautiful day. We followed a winding path 
called ' The Meadow Walk,' which crosses and recrosses a merry 



A LUXURIOUS FEAST. 



m 



mountain brook ; we ascended the hill of Coomakista, crossed the 
line of the new road, and ere half an hour had elapsed, a hare was 
started. It was a glorious run ; the hare was in view for half a 
mile or more ; and as the dogs ran the scent, they kept so close to- 
gether, that a sheet might have covered the pack. O'Connell, who 
enjoyed the hunt with infinite glee, walked and ran from rock to 
rock, to keep the dogs in view. The mountain air had already 
sharpened my appetite, and I inquired rather anxiously when we 
should have breakfast. 

" ' Not until we kill two hares,' replied O'Connell ; ' we must earn 
our breakfast.' He then engaged in busy speculations on the course 
of the hare — she had doubled, and thrown out the dogs — the pack 
were at fault; they had scattered, and were trying in different 
directions to recover the scent. Ah ! Drummer hit the scent again, 
and now they were all once more in full pursuit. 

"It was a glorious scene. Overhead was a cloudless sky; 
around us, on every side, was the most magnificent scenery, lighted 
up with brilliant sunshine. There was that finest of all music, the 
loud, full cry of the beagles, returned by a thousand echoes ; the 
shouts of men and boys ringing sharp and cheerily along the hills ; 
and there was Daniel O'Connell himself, equalling in agility men not 
half his age, pouring forth an exhaustless stream of jest and anec- 
dote, and entering with joyous zeal into the fullest spirit of the 
noble sport. 

" Two hares were killed within an hour and a half ; and we then 
sat down to breakfast in a small sheltered nook. It was a green 
hollow in the hill-side, about 900 feet above the level of the sea. 
Immediately over us projected a grey rock, which formed a sort of 
rude ceiling to the inner part of our mountain parlour. Breakfast 
in such, a spot, and with such appetites, was truly a luxurious feast. 
A fragment of rock was our table ; some of the party sat on stones, 
whilst others reclined in primitive fashion on the grass. The hunts- 
men, in their gay red jackets, and several of the peasantry, formed 
an irregular line upon the outskirts. The noble dugs sat around 

2c 



§ 



I 



with an air of quiet dignity, that seemed indicative of conscious 
merit. Far beneath us was the Atlantic, sparkling in the morning 
sun ; to the right were the mountain isles of Scarriff and the bold 
rocks of Skellig. 

" The post-boy arrived with the letter-bag while we were at break- 
fast. Mr O'Connell read his letters on the mountain ; the hunt was 
then resumed, and with such success, that, if I mistake not, we 
brought home seven hares at sunset. 

" On days when he did not hunt, the mode in which he usually 
disposed of his time at Darrynane was as follows : — After breakfast 
the newspapers and letters occupied, in general, from one to two 
hours ; he would then, if the day was fine, stroll out for a while to 
the beach, the garden, or to his turret in the shrubbery. Whenever 
I accompanied him on any of these walks, he invariably pointed 
out among the surrounding rocks the course of some hunt, and de- 
tailed, with a minuteness that evinced the interest he took in the 
subject, the various turns of the hare, and the exploits of the dogs. 
He would then return to the house, and spend the rest of the day 
till dinner in his study. One day I found him reading the ' Col- 
legians,' which he told me was his favourite work of fiction. ' I 
have been reading it over again,' said he, ' with a melancholy interest. 
Scanlan was the real name of the man who is called Hardress 
Cregan in the novel. I was Scanlan's counsel at the trial, and I 
knocked up the principal witness against him. But all would not 
do ; there were proofs enough besides, that were quite sufficient to 
convict him.' 

" He always occupied the head of his table at dinner, and, with 
rare exceptions, was talkative and jocular during that meal. He 
generally sat about an hour after it, and then returned to the study, 
where he remained until bed-time." 

A letter which O'Connell wrote from Darrynane to 
Walter Savage Landor, in October 1838, shows how he 
loved his mountain home. He says — 



A 

X 

% 







" I could show you at noontide, when the stern south-wester had 
blown long and rudely, the mountain waves coming in from the 
illimitable ocean, in majestic succession, expending their gigantic 
force, and throwing up stupendous masses of foam, against the 
more gigantic and more stupendous mountain cliffs that fence not 
only this my native spot, but form that eternal barrier which pre- 
vents the wild Atlantic from submerging the cultivated plains and 
high-steepled villages of proud Britain herself. Or, were you with 
me amidst the Alpine scenery that surrounds my humble abode, 
listening to the eternal roar of the mountain torrent, as it bounds 
through the rocky defiles of my native glens, I would venture to 
tell you how I was born within the sound of the everlasting wave, 
and how my dreamy boyhood dwelt upon imaginary intercourse with 
those who are dead of yore, and fed its fond fancies upon the 
ancient and long faded glories of that land which preserved litera- 
ture and Christianity, when the rest of the now civilised Europe 
was shrouded in the darkness of godless ignorance. Yes ; my 
expanding spirit delighted in these dreams, till catching from them 
an enthusiasm which no disappointment can embitter, nor accumu- 
lating years diminish, I formed the high resolve to leave my native 
land better after my death than I found her at my birth, and, if 
possible, to make her what she ought to be — 

' Great, glorious, and free, 
First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea.' 

" Perhaps, if I could show you the calm and exquisite beauty of 
these capacious bays and mountain promontories, softened in the 
pale moonlight which shines this lovely evening, till all, which 
during the day was grand and terrific, has become calm and serene 
in the silent tranquillity of the clear night, perhaps you would 
readily admit that the man who has been so often called a ferocious 
demagogue, is, in truth, a gentle lover of Nature, an enthusiast of 
all her beauties — 



' Fond of each gentle and each dreary scene,' 





and catching, from the loveliness as well as the dreariness of the 
ocean, and Alpine scenes with which it is surrounded, a greater 
ardour to promote the good of man, in his overwhelming admiration 
of the mighty works of God." 




O'Connell's power of apprehension was remarkable. 
While apparently absorbed in letters or papers of the 
greatest importance, he would often hear and answer some 
observation, which might be made in the lowest tone, and 
at the far end of a large room. He once gave considerable 
annoyance to a legal friend, who was consulting him about 
an act of parliament. 

" The lawyer was reading aloud the disputable parts of the act, 
when he suddenly stopped short, exclaiming, ' O, Mr O'Counell, I 
sea you are reading something else ; I '11 wait till you have done.' 
'Go on ! go on, man!' said O'Connell, without raising his eyes from 
the document with which he was engaged, ' I hear you quite dis- 
tinctly. If you had as much to do as I have, you would long ago 
have been trained into the knack of devoting the one moment to two 
occupations.' The other obeyed, and when he had concluded his 
queries, O'Connell put aside the second subject of his thoughts, and 
delivered a detailed reply to all the questions of his visitor." 

O'Connell's clients were not always of his own way of 
thinking, either in religion or politics. 

" Mr Hedges Eyre, a gentleman of Orange notoriety, had in- 
variably engaged O'Connell as his counsel. On one occasion a 
brother Orangeman severely censured Hedges Eyre for employing 
the Catholic leader. ' Yon 've got seven counsel without him,' quoth 
this sage adviser, ' and why should you give your money to that 
Papist rascal V 

" Hedges did not make any immediate reply ; but they both 
remained in court, watching the progress of the trial. The counsel 





/ 1 



THE DOCTOR'S PATIESTS. 



on the opposite side pressed a point for non-suit, and carried the 
judge (Johnson) along with them. O'Connell remonstrated against 

the non-suit, protesting against so great an injustice. The judge 
seemed obdurate. ' Well, hear me, at all events ! ' said O'Connell. 
' No, I won't ! ' replied the judge ; ' I 've already heard the leading 
counsel.' ' But / am conducting counsel, my lord,' rejoined O'Con- 
nell, ' and more intimately aware of the details of the case than 
my brethren. I entreat, therefore, you will hear me.' The judge 
ungraciously consented ; and in five minutes O'Connell had argued 
him out of the non-suit. 'Now,' said Hedges Eyre, in triumph, to 
his Orange confrere, ' now do you see why I give my money to that 
Papist rascal ? ' " 

In 1809 O'Connell was indebted to Edmund Lees, then 
Secretary to the General Post-Office, for the establishment 
of a post-office at Cahirciveen. He gained a lawsuit for Mr 
Lees, who evinced his gratitude in this practical manner. 

" One of O'Connell's stories was about a physician who was 
detained for many days at the Limerick assizes, to which he had 
been subpoenaed as a witness. He pressed the judge to order him 
his expenses. 'On what plea do you claim your expenses]' de- 
manded the judge. ' On the plea of my heavy personal loss and 
inconvenience, my lord,' replied the simple applicant ; ' I have been 
kept away from my patients these five days, and if I am kept here 
much longer, how do I know but they '11 yet well?' " 

From the year 1813 to the year 1815 O'Connell was 
occupied, or rather overwhelmed, with occupation, by his 
efforts to keep the Catholic party together, and his own 
constantly increasing business. 

The celebrated trial of John Magee took place in 1813. 
He was the proprietor of the Dublin Evening Post ; and a 



i 

I 



Eg 

m 

w 



406 



TRIAL OF MAG BE. 



review of the careers of the various Irish viceroys who had 
preceded the Duke of Richmond, was inserted in this 
paper when the' duke retired. The article was written hy 
Mr Scully, the author of a well-known and most important 
work upon the penal laws. In early life he did not appear 
as a patriot; hut a careful consideration of the state of 
the country could not fail to arouse any honest man to 
do his hest to advocate her cause. His bookseller was 
imprisoned for publishing his book, and his editor was 
imprisoned for publishing his article. Altogether Mr 
Scully was not pleasant as a literary friend. The trial of 
the publisher arose thus: — In the year 1809, a Catholic 
farmer named Barry, a native of the county Wexford, 
was sentenced to death, and hanged, although there was 
complete evidence after his unjust conviction to prove his 
innocence. Mr Scully mentioned this fact, for it was a 
fact, in his Statement of the Penal Laws ; and as Mr Hugh 
Fitzpatrick was the publisher, he was prosecuted. 

The Attorney- General Saurin said there was internal 
evidence that the Statement of the Penal Laws was com- 
piled by a lawyer, and that, though he was safe from 
punishment because he was anonymous, he ought not to 
be so from remorse for his conduct. Mr Scully at once 
rose in court, and said he would give the author's name, if 
he would be guaranteed an impartial trial of the facts. 
The Attorney-General knew the facts as well as any one, 
and how terribly damaging they were to the Government. 



% 



ft 



n 









TRIAL OF MAG BE. 



4u7 



He said he " stood there to prosecute a libeller, and not 
to defend the Government;" a very sensible reply. So 
the affair ended — not, however, without another appeal 
from Scully, to whom Sauriu observed a discreet silence. 

The case went on. O'Connell examined Mr Burrows 
Campbell, who had been counsel for the murdered man. 
It was proved thereby that counsel had applied to postpone 
the trial ; that witnesses could not be procured, the notice 
was so short ; that Norbury, of sanguinary memory, re- 
fused the application ; that counsel thereupon threw up 
his brief; that counsel, after the conviction of the murdered 
man, wrote to Lord Norbury concerning the voluntary 
affidavits of those persons who were to have been Barry's 
witnesses, in which they swore that he was in their com- 
pany at a distance of forty-five miles from the place where 
the murder was committed ; that counsel only received 
a verbal reply;* that he applied then to the Attorney- 
General ; that the Attorney- General took no notice what- 
ever of the mattew; that he did not believe it was be- 
cause the man was a Catholic, that he was hanged bein°- 
innocent ; that Catholics were not so badly treated 
as that — to which Mr O'Connell replied, " No, they are 
not all hanged ; " that he spoke of the circumstances to 
every one; and that he considered them " very shocking." 
O'Connell made an admirable defence. He showed 
that Mr Pole and Sir Charles Saxton were the persons 
in office when the book was published, and that two other 




persons held their situation when the information wag 
filed. The verdict was, of course, against Mr Fitz- 
patrick. O'Connell then made an application to have 
the verdict set aside on the ground of " misdirection " 
on the part of the judge who had charged the jury. In 
his long and eloquent address we find the following 
sentence — 

" It was matter of Irish history, that when these State prosecu- 
tions were carrying on against a Catholic of this country, not one 
man of his own religion was suffered to remain upon the panel." 

The trial of Magee created an immense sensation — none 
the less that the Attorney- General was legally dissected 
by O'Connell, in a fashion which it has not often fallen to 
the lot of an Attorney-General to hear. O'Connell, cer- 
tainly, only stated facts, hut he had a very clear way of 
putting facts. He opened his address by expressing " his 
inability to discover what he had to reply to." He then 
proceeded to reason in anticipation of a conviction, and 
showed the hopeless manner in which that gentleman had 
involved himself in stating the subjects of the indictment. 
He had declared that Mr Magee was indicted as the pro- 
prietor of a newspaper, or the printer of a newspaper, and 
as having charged the Duke of Richmond with being a 
murderer, yet none of these counts were found in the in- 
dictment. O'Connell then took up the precedent on which 
Mr Saurin acted, and showed, to the satisfaction of the 
audience, if not to the satisfaction of the counsel, that the 




TRIAL OF MAGEE. 



case proved precisely the reverse of that for which it was 
quoted. 

The twice-postponed trial was commenced on the 26th 
of June 1813. The Attorney-General opened the case, and 
witnesses were called to prove publication. There was a 
full bar on either side, the Attorney-General and the 
Solicitor-General being for the prosecution, with Sergeants 
Moore, Ball, and M'Mahon. The counsels for the defendant 
were O'Connell, Wallace, Hamilton, Finlay, and Philips. 
The matter was one of very grave importance, both for 
the Crown and for the people. It involved the question 
of the liberty of the press, and each side came to the 
forensic battle with the full knowledge of what was 
involved. 

The Attorney-General imperilled his reputation, if he 
did not injure his cause, by using bad language, by de- 
scending to personal abuse of the man he was prosecuting. 
He called him a " malefactor," a " ruffian," and other 
names, with which we do not choose to defile these pages. 

O'Connell's defence of Magee was his master effort 
at the bar. The concentrated yet galling scorn with 
which he treated both the manner and the matter of 
his opponent was something which could never have been 
forgotten by those who listened to it. The apparent 
compassion which he manifested when he knew that 
he had driven him to desperation was inimitably con- 
veyed. He "pitied" him, he "forgave" him, he de- 



r 




&M& 



clared hiru an object of compassion ; he selected carefully 
each vulgar epithet, and repeated them for the considera- 
tion of the jury, while he took care to expose the low origin 
of the unfortunate lawyer, by expressing his wonder how he 
could have recollected the forms of speech which must have 
been familiar to him in early life, " after having mixed 
for thirty years in polished society." And then, having 
briefly alluded to his " well-pensioned but ill-read news- 
paper," and its imitation of Saurin's bad language, and 
denouncing " the style and manner of the Attorney- 
General's discussion," he proceeded to the matter. 

O'Connell was well aware that his speech would be read 
in England by most of the leading politicians of the day, 
and he took the opportunity of giving them a condensed 
history of Ireland, seasoned by a pungent commentary on 
British misrule. It was in vain that the Chief Justice 
meekly said, " What, Mr O'Connell, can this have to do 
with the question the jury have to try?" Mr O'Connell 
certainly did not snub him because he was meek, but he 
took excellent care to continue his defence precisely as lie 
had begun it. He declared that he was " compelled " by 
the Attorney- General to be political, though he had hitherto 
made it a " rigid rule of his professional conduct " not to 
mingle politics with his forensic duties. 

This was true, but we suspect, if an equally good oppor- 
tunity had offered, that the " rigid rule " would have been 
relaxed. It was true, also, that the unfortunate Attorney- 









•-'! 






General bad given him an opportunity, which that indi- 
vidual must have deeply regretted to the end of his life. 

The Attorney-General said that Catholics were sedi- 
tious, treasonable, and revolutionary ; it was an old story 
that, but the same charge, though still older in the present 
day, answers political purposes too well to be abandoned 
easily. O'Connell said that the Catholics only asked to 
participate in the advantages of the constitution. 

" Strange inconsistent voice of calumny," he exclaimed. " You 
charge us with intemperance in our exertions for a participation in 
the constitution, and you charge us, at the same time, almost in the 
same sentence, with a design to overturn that constitution. The 
dupes of your hypocrisy may believe you ; but, base calumniators, 
you do not, you cannot believe yourselves !" 

The Attorney-General had boasted of his triumph over 
the Pope and Popery. " I have put down," he said, " the 
Catholic Committee ; I will put down at my good time the 
Catholic Board." He was unwise as well as ungentle- 
manly to taunt O'Connell thus : it was the low boast of 
that Ascendency which had kept Ireland disunited for 
centuries. O'Connell replied — - 

" This boast is partly historical, partly prophetical. He was 
wrong in his history — he is quite mistaken in his prophecy. He did 
not put down the Catholic Committee ; we gave up that name the 
moment that it was confessedly avowed, that this sapient Attorney- 
General's polemico-legal controversy dwindled into a mere dispute 
about words. He told us that in the English language ' pretence ' 
means ' purpose.' Had it been French, and not English, we might 
have been inclined to respect his judgment, but in point of English 



TRIAL OF MAGEE. 



we venture to differ with him ; we told him ' purpose,' good Mr 
Attorney-General, is just the reverse of ' pretence.' The quarrel 
grew warm and animated ; we appealed to common sense, to the 
grammar, and to the dictionary ; common sense, grammar, and the 
dictionary decided in our favour. He brought his appeal to this 
Court. Your lordship and your brethren unanimously decided that, 
in point of law — mark, gentlemen of the jury, the sublime wisdom 
of law — the court decided that, in point of law, 'pretence' does 
mean 'purpose!' 

" Fully contented with this very reasonable and more satisfactory 
decision, there still remained a matter of fact between us : the At- 
torney-General charged us with being representatives ; we denied all 
representation. He had two witnesses to prove the fact for him — 
they swore to it one way at one trial, and directly the other way at 
the next. An honourable, intelligent, and enlightened jury disbe- 
lieved those witnesses at the first trial ; matters were better man- 
aged at the second trial — the jury were better arranged ; I speak 
delicately, gentlemen ; the jury were better arranged, as the 
witnesses were better informed ; and, accordingly, there was one 
verdict for us on the representative question, and one verdict 
against us. 

" He concluded this part of his subject by exclaiming — ' Oh ! the 
Attorney-General ! the best and wisest of men ! ' O'Conn ell's de- 
fence of the Press was masterly ; and he showed how, when it first 
came into existence, it was stifled and trammelled by the Star 
Chamber. When do the people want protection? — when the Govern- 
ment is engaged in delinquencies, oppression, and crimes. It is 
against these that the people want the protection of the Press. 
Now, I put it to your plain sense, whether the Press can afford such 
protection, if it be punished for treating of these crimes? 

" Still more, can a shadow of protection be given by a Press that 
is not permitted to mention the errors, the talents, and the striking 
features of an administration? Here is a watchman admitted by 
the Attorney-General to be at his post to warn the people of their 



1 




i 



danger, and tbe first thing that is done to this watchman is to knock 
him down and bring him to a dungeon, for announcing the danger 
he is bound to disclose. I agree with tbe Attorney-General, the 
Press is a protection, but it is not in its silence or in its voice of 
flatter}'. It can protect only by speaking out when there is danger, 
or error, or want of ability. 



"The Attorney-General told us, rather ludicrously, that they, 
meaning the duke's predecessors,, included, of course, himself. How 
a man could be included amongst his predecessors, it would be 
difficult to discover. It seems to be that mode of expression which 
would indicate, that the Attorney-General, notwithstanding his 
foreign descent, has imbibed some of tbe language of the native Irish. 
But our blunders arise, not like this, from a confusion of idea ; they 
are generally caused by too great condensation of thought ; they 
are, indeed, frequently of the head, but never — never of the heart. 
Would I could say so much for the Attorney-General ; his blunder 
is not to be attributed to his cool and cautious head ; it sprung, I 
much fear, from the misguided bitterness of the bigotry of his 
heart ! 

" Well, gentlemen, this sentence does, in broad and distinct terms, 
charge the predecessors of the duke, but not the duke himself, with 
insult, oppression, murder, and deceit. But it is history, gentlemen : 
are yon prepared to silence the voice of history ? Are you disposed 
to suppress the recital of facts — the story of the events of former 
days? Is the historian, and the publisher of history, to be exposed 
to indictment and punishment?" 

A resume of Irish history followed, and as O'Connell re- 
lated each act of English cruelty, perfidy, and illegality, lie 
asked, " In what ladylike language shall these things be 
recorded ? " He showed that, up to this period, trial by 
jury in Ireland had been "a mockery of law and justice." 






I 

Mi 



fi 




It was then insinuated that it was very far from being other- 
wise at that very time. 

He flung scorn on those who countenanced and encour- 
aged legal dishonesty, while they distributed Bible.?, and 
called themselves suppressors of vice. 

In the article for which Magee was indicted, the expres- 
sion, " the profligate, unprincipled Westmoreland " was 
especially noted. On this O'Connell related some of the 
shameless and almost nameless crimes of this wretched 
man, and observed : — 

" What if these scenes were enacted in the open day — would you 
call that profligacy, sweet distributors of Bibles? The women of 
Ireland have always been beauteous to a proverb ; they were, with- 
out an exception, chaste beyond the terseness of a proverb to express ; 
they are still as chaste as in former days ; but the depraved example 
of a depraved court has furnished some exceptions, and the action 
of criminal conversation, before the time of Westmoreland unknown, 
has since become mo'-e familiar to our courts of justice. 

" Call you the sad example which produced those exceptions — call 
you that profligacy, suppressors of vice and Bible distributors ? The 
vices of the poor are within the reach of control ; to suppress them, 
you can call in aid the churchwarden and the constable ; the justice 
of the peace will readily aid you, for he is a gentleman ; the Court 
of Sessions will punish those vices for you by fine, by imprison- 
ment, and, if you are urgent, by whipping. But, suppressors of vice, 
who shall aid you to suppress the vices of the great ? Are you 
sincere, or are you, to use your own phraseology, whitewashed tombs, 
painted charnel-houses ? Be ye hypocrites ? If you are not — if 
you be sincere — (and, oh ! how I wish that you were) — if you be 
sincere, I will steadily require to know of you, what aid you expect 
to suppress the vices of the rich and great ? Who will assist you to 
suppress those vices? The churchwarden !— why, he, I believe, 







i 




handed them into the best pew in one of your cathedrals, that they 
might lovingly hear divine service together. The constable !— 
absurd. The justice of the peace !— no, upon his honour. As to 
the Court of Sessions, you cannot expect it to interfere ; and, my 
lords, the judges are really so busy at the .assizes, in hurrying the 
grand juries through the presentments, that there is no leisure to look 
after the scandalous faults of the great. Who, then, sincere and 
candid suppressors of vice, can aid you t— The Press ; the Press 
alone talks of the profligacy of the great ; and, at least, shames into 
decency those whom it may fail to correct. The Presses your assistant, 
but your only one. Go, then, men of conscience, men of religion 
—go, then, and convict John Magee, because he published that 
Westmoreland was profligate and unprincipled as a lord-lieutenant 
—do convict, and then return to your distribution of Bibles and to 
your attacks upon the recreations of the poor, under the name of 
vices ! 

" Do convict the only aid which virtue has, and distribute your 
Bibles, that you may have the name of being religious; upon 
your sincerity depends my client's prospect of a verdict. Does he 
lean upon a broken reed ? " 

Camden had been called "the cold-hearted and cruel 
Camdeii." O'Connell pleaded justification of the libel, 
and re-asserted it. 

" I pass on from the sanctified portion of the jury which I have 
latterly addressed, and I call the attention of you all to the next 
member of the sentence — 

" ' The cold-hearted and cruel Camden.' 

" Here I have your prejudices all armed against me. In the 
administration of Camden, your faction was cherished and trium- 
phant. Will you prevent him from being called cold and cruel ? 
Alas ! to-day, why have I not men to address who would listen to 
me for the sake of impartial justice ? But even with you the case 
is too powerful to allow me to despair. 






fi 



" Well, I do say, the cold and cruel Camden. Why, on one 
circuit, during his administration, there were one hundred indi- 
viduals TEIED BEFORE ONE JUDGE; OF THESE NINETY-EIGHT WERE 
CAPITALLY CONVICTED, AND NINETY-SEVEN HANGED ! I understand 

one escaped ; but he was a soldier who murdered a peasant, or 
something of that trivial nature — NINETY-SEVEN victims in 
one circuit ! ! ! 

" In the meantime it was necessary, for the purposes of the 
Union, that the flame of rebellion should be fed. The meetings of 
the rebel colonete in the north were, for a length of time, regularly 
reported to Government ; but the rebellion was not then ripe enough; 
and whilst the fruit was coming to maturity, under the fostering 
hand of the administration, the wretched dupes atoned on the 
gallows for allowing themselves to be deceived." 

He spoke then in glowing language of the soldierly 
Abercromby and the lTeroic Moore, men whom England 
delighted to honour, whose names will ever be enshrined 
in history as amongst the bravest and best of her soldiers ; 
and he showed how they had characterised the administra- 
tration of Camden, and the fashion in which Ireland was 
governed during the Rebellion. 

But perhaps what told most on the Attorney-General's 
case, after the allusions to his own origin, was the allu- 
sion to his own politics. In Ireland at least, men 
should be cautious in early life ; for when some un- 
happy judge or Queen's Counsel comes forward to de- 
nounce in scathing and vengeful language the delinquen- 
cies of his victims, it will perhaps be found that they 
have only followed in his footsteps at a humble distance ; 
and for one unwise expression on their part, half a dozen 




criminal suggestions may be on record against the judge 
or the counsel. 

" In humble and obscure distance I followed the footsteps of my 
present adversaries. What their sentiments were then of the authors 
of the Union, I beg to read to you ; I will read them from a news- 
paper set up for the mere purpose of opposing the Union, and con- 
ducted under the control of these gentlemen. If their editor should 
be gravely denied, I shall only reply — ' Oh ! cease your funning.' 1 

" The charge of being a Jacobin was at that time made against 
the present Attorney-General— him, plain William Saurin— in the 
very terms, and with just as much truth as he now applies it to my 
clients. His reply shall serve for that of Mr Magee. I take it from 
the Anti-Union of 22d March 1800. 

" ' To the charge of Jacobin, Mr Saurin said he knew not what it 
meant, as applied to him, except it was an opposition to the will of 
the British minister.' 

" So says Mr Magee ; but, gentlemen, my eye lights upon another 
passage of Mr Saurin's, in the same speech from which I have 
quoted the above. It was in these words : — 

" ' Mr Saurin admitted that debates might sometimes produce 
agitations, but that was the price necessarily paid for liberty.' 

" Oh, how I thank this good Jew for the word. Yes, agitation is, 
as Mr Saurin well remarked, the price necessarily paid for liberty. 
We have paid the price, gentlemen, and the honest man refuses to 
give us the goods. 

"Now, gentlemen, of this Mr Saurin, then an agitator, I beg 
leave to read the opinion upon this Union, the author of which we 
have only called artful and treacherous. From his speech of the 
13th March 1800, I select those passages : — 

" ' Mr Saurin said he felt it his duty to the crown, to the country, 
and to his family, to warn the minister of the dreadful consequences 



1 A pamphlet under this title was published by the Solicitor-General; 
it was full of wit and talent. 

2d 







of persevering in a measure which the people of Ireland almost 
unanimously disliked' 

" And again : — 

" ' He, for one, would assert the principles of the glorious revolu- 
tion, and boldly declare, in the face of the nation, that when the 
sovereign power dissolved the compact that existed between the 
Government and the people, that moment the right of resistance 
accrues. 

" ' Whether it would be prudent in the people to avail themselves 
of that right, would be another question. But if a legislative union 
were forced on tbe country, against the will of its inhabitants, it 
would be a nullity, and resistance to it would be a struggle against 
usurpation, and not a resistance against law.' 

" May I be permitted just to observe, how much more violent 
this agitator of the year 1800, than we poor and timid agitators of 
the year 1813. When did we talk of resistance being a question of 
prudence 1 Shame upon the men who call us intemperate, and yet 
remember their own violence. 

But, gentlemen, is the Attorney-General at liberty to change the 
nature of things with his own official and professional prospects'? 
I am ready to admit that he receives thousands of pounds by the 
year of the public moneys, in his office of Attorney -General — thou- 
sands from the Crown-Solicitor — thousands, for doing little work, 
from the Custom house ; but does all this public booty with which 
he is loaded alter the nature of things, or prevent that from being 
a deceitful measure, brought about by artful and treacherous means, 
against which Mr Saurin, in 1800, preached the holy doctrine of 
insurrection, .sounded the tocsin of resistance, and summoned tbe 
people of the land to battle against it, as against usurpation ? 

"In 1800, he absolves the subjects from their allegiance, if the 
usurpation, styled tbe Union, will be carried ; and he, this identical 
agitator, in 1813 indicts a man, and calls him a ruffian, for speak- 
ing of the contrivers of the Union, not as usurpers, but as artful, 
treacherous men. Gentlemen, pity the situation in which he has 



v 









- 












placed himself, and pray, do not think of inflicting punishment 
upon my client for his extreme moderation." 

At the conclusion of tins wonderful speech, O'Connell 
proved that the Attorney-General had been asked to pro- 
secute a paper which had contained gross libels upon 
Catholics, and that he had refused. O'Connell concluded 
thus : — 

" There are amongst you men of great religious zeal, of much 
public piety. Are you sincere ? Do you believe what you profess ? 
With all this zeal, with all this piety, is there any conscience 
amongst you t Is there any terror of violating your oaths 1 Be ye 
hypocrites, or does genuine religion inspire ye ? If you be sincere, 
if you have conscience, if your oaths can control your interests, 
then Mr Magee confidently expects an acquittal. 

" If amongst you there be cherished one ray of pure religion, if 
amongst you there glow a single spark of liberty, if I have alarmed 
religion, or roused the spirit of freedom in one breast amongst you, 
Mr Magee is safe, and his country is served; but if there be none — 
if you be slaves and hypocrites, he will await your verdict, and 
despise it." 

The verdict of course was ior the Crown. 



Z? f 



It required an intelligence and a mind like his to grasp the 
bearings of the whole case, and to sacrifice the present ap- 
parent good in order to avert the future corresponding evil. 

We have already said something of the political opinions of 
English Catholics. They made then, we much fear that some 
few make still, the fatal mistake of dissociating themselves 
from their Irish brethren. We have seen how some of tliem 
were even willing to forego the name of Catholic, and 
their self-respect along with it, for the miserable imaginary 
advantage of a higher social respectability. It is a matter 
of history, that the great majority — that, in fact, an over- 
whelming majority — of English Catholics apostatised from 
their religion to preserve their worldly goods. A noble few 
remained faithful, but the leaven of worldliness was at work 
even amongst these few, and they readily listened to any spe- 
cious plea which would tend to lessen that isolation from 
their Protestant fellow-countrymen which they felt to be, 
and which was, a social bar sinister. They seemed to have 
forgotten that the religion to which they belonged did not 
promise them either temporal prosperity or worldly honour, 
and that it might demand the sacrifice of both. 

There were, even then, men in England who had renounced 
their religion, because they had clear views of what it de- 
manded. They were men who had quietly counted the cost. 
They knew very well what their religion required, but they 
had made up their minds not to submit to its requirements. 
They were, if I may say so, honest apostates. There was 



I 



yet another class who also knew what their religion required, 
but who were always trying to make the requirements of 
their religion square iu with the requirements of the world. 
They might as well have tried to square the circle. They 
failed miserably. They lost their own self-respect, and 
they lost the respect of others. They gained nothing in 
this world; as for the next, there are some words on 
record, uttered by Eternal Truth, about the folly of being 
ashamed of Him here, and the certainty of eternal shame 
for those who yield to this temptation. 

O'Connell hated humbug. He believed in an honest 
Protestant, he respected an honest Catholic, but he could 
not endure one who professed to believe a certain creed, and 
was nevertheless ashamed of it. 

O'Connell was not singular in his opinions. 

The Evening Post of the 10th June 1813, contains the 
following : — 

" Extract of a private letter received at our office this morning, 
dated — 

" ' London, Monday, June 7. 

" ' Two English Catholics of rank waited upon his grace the 
Duke of Norfolk, on Saturday last, to inform him of the valorous 
exploit of their board, at its meeting of the 29th ultimo, in expel- 
ling the venerable Milner from their room, with shouts of indignity 
and wrath. 

" ' The duke, who was bred a Catholic, retains his ancient habits 
of intimacy with the bishop, and although he renounced Popery for 
political pursuits, yet he has not, like vulgar renegades, withdrawn 
his support from the Catholic cause. His two noble visitors having 
detailed to him their honourable triumph of the 29th May—" Aye, 




A STINGING REEL RE. 



you have done well," observed his grace, with the keenest irony, " I 
applaud you for this ; it is just what I ought to wish. You are 
following my example. You will soon become good Protestants. 
I have been only thirty-five years beforehand with you. But, after 
all, let me tell you, that Doctor Milner is only defending the true old 
Catholic religion." 

" ' The visitors felt the sting, took their leave, and returned to 
Stanhope Street.' " 

We have not space, and we candidly admit that we have 
not inclination, to enter into a detail of the pitiful squab- 
bles connected with this subject. The Irish episcopacy 
and the Irish people were firm, as they have ever been, in 
the cause of truth and justice, and the cause of truth and 
justice triumphed. 2 

In 1813, Castle Browne, in the county Kildare, was 



2 When Quarantotti's rescript arrived in Ireland in 1814, Dr Lanigan, 
the eminent Irish ecclesiastical historian, opposed it most vigorously. 
He showed that to decide such a point would have required the de- 
liberation of the whole congregation of Propaganda, ami even of an 
(Ecumenical Council. In a letter which he wrote to the Dublin Even- 
ing Post, he said, " The document is not fromhis Holiness Pius VII. . . 
nor is there a word to indicate any sort of consent or approbation from 
the Sovereign Pontiff or any one of his cardinals. Quarantotti refers 
to no authority but his own." 

In an admirable little work, "Notices of the Life and Character of 
the Most Rev. Dr Murray," by the Rev. William Meagher, now Mon- 
stigneur Meagher — Dublin, 1853 — the whole subject is fully and ably 
treated. This work would be well worth republishing for many reasons. 
On Good Friday 1816, Dr Murray delivered a most powerful sermon 
against the Veto. " He implored the misguided advocates of vetoism 
not to impose new and disgraceful bands on the mystical body of the 
Redeemer." 



)F 



P 






\< ' 



purchased by the Jesuits. This proceeding, of course, 
excited the wrath of the Orange party. The Jesuits have 
had the singular honour of being noted and persecuted 
more than the other religious orders in the Church. The 
very name is made a by-word and reproach ; and inen 
who ought to know better, and whose understanding we 
shall not insult by supposing them in the state of crass 
ignorance which their words would seem to indicate, find a 
singular pleasure in misrepresenting the Society for any 
excuse or for none. 

The name has done service as a watchword of bigotry, and 
d bas les Jesuites has been a party cry of intolerance for 
several centuries. There will probably always be a certain 
class of men who will find the cry too convenient to 
abandon it. 

O'Connell at once came to the rescue. He introduced 
the subject at a meeting of the Catholic Board on the 24th 
December 1813. 

"Under date of the 18th of last November, a newspaper in 
the pay of the Castle has the following tirade, upon the occasion of 
the seat called Castle Browne in Kildare, having been, as it asserts, 
purchased by Jesuits : — ' Ireland stands in imminent danger. If 
Popery succeeds, her fairest plains will once more witness days 
worthy of Bloody Mary ; and the walls of Derry shall again become 
the lamentable bulwarks against Popish treachery and massacre ! ' 
Well, this from men who hate the expression of any kind of bigotry 
— who are in a rage at Di Dromgoole for using the word ' novelty ' 
in a disrespectful sense ! It is, one would think, rather uncivil. 
' Papist treachery and massacre ' are perhaps nearly as bad as ' Pro- 



P& 



\ 



testant novelty.' But this is a mere jest compared with a paragraph 
which I found in a Government paper of the 2d of this present De- 
cember. Hear it with patience : — 'The letter of Cranmer (alluding 
to a letter inserted in that paper) shows the times respectively when 
each of the fundamental tenets of Popery was invented — viz., the 
power of the Pope to dispense with oaths, and depose sovereign 
priflces by absolving subjects from their oaths of allegiance, the 
nullity of oaths to heretics, their extirpation as a religious duty ! ' 

" Recollect that it is not a mere isolated individual ; it is a man 
patronised and salaried by the administration — a man paid with our 
money — that has the effrontery to traduce us thus ; to attribute to 
us, as fundamental tenets, doctrines of perjury, murder, and treason 
— doctrines which, if they were those of the Church of Rome, I 
■would not belong to her communion for an hour — doctrines which 
shock humanity, and would make religion the most cruel and the 
most absurd mockery ! 



" Where is now that fever of zeal and fever of liberality that in- 
duced the public press to strain all its energies on the attack of Dr 
Dromgoole? Whom did his published speech accuse of perjury, of 
murder, and treason ? What ! shall it be said that, like the eels in 
the story, we Catholics are so accustomed to be skinned alive that 
we do not feel it, but that the sensibility of every other sect deserves 
the highest protection — that of the Catholic people none 1 Are, 
then, the Catholics, in the opinion of their friends, in such a state of 
moral degradation, that it is quite unimportant how they are treated? 
Alas ! I much fear there are too many who think so ; and, miserable 
slaves that we are, our own dissensions encourage and justify the 
opinion. 

But that opinion has a higher source still. The law — the bar- 
barous and calumniating spirit of legislation — has consecrated the 
contempt in which we are held. No Protestant can hold office in 
Ireland without being obliged to swear : — 

" ' That the invocation of the saints, and the sacrifice of the mass, 




as thai are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and 
idolatrous ! ' 

" Take notice, it is not any abstract notion that may be formed 
of these practices, but the practices themselves, ' as they are actually 
used,' are idolatrous. 

" Thus our Protestant relatives, kinsmen, friends, are to swear 
solemnly, to attest to the Eternal Being, that we are Idolaters ! 
Hence, then, with the partial and corrupt irritability that seeks for 
causes of censure in the language of an unavowed individual 
Catholic, and forgets the paid, the salaried, the authorised, alas ! the 
sworn calumnies, the bigotry of our adversaries." 

O'Connell's strongest arguments were simply wasted on 
men blinded by intolerance. 8 

Peel was then secretary for Ireland. He sent for Dr 
Kenny, the president of the college, to interrogate him. 
Dr Kenny was perfectly aware that Peel had no authority 
whatever for this proceeding, but he went. He proved 
more than a match for the English statesman, and at 
the close of the interview, he said to Mr Peel, " I under- 
stand that you have a son?" Mr Peel said he had. Dr 



3 When the Duke of Lemster was examined before Parliament about his 
neighbours the Jesuits, he spoke of them most fairly, and said, not without 
some surprise, that lie had found them able to bring up boys well. He 
said their answers were " wonderful." So far he was sufficiently above 
prejudice to be able to comprehend to a certain extent, and to witness 
fairly to a state of life which he had hitherto believed to be very different. 
But an amusing instance of Protestant ignorance followed :— 

"Is it not professedly an establishment for Jesuits 1" he was asked. 

" i'cs, they are Jesuits," answered the duke, " for I met them in 
Italy." 

We have ourselves known many educated people who imagined any 
priest of ordinary intelligence must be a Jesuit. 






/'■:, 



II 






II 

I 






Kenny replied, " I can assure you with the veracity of one 
•whose duty it is to he truthful, that if you send him to 
our college, we shall make him a sound scholar." Peel 
laughed heartily, hut declined the favour. In the course 
of this important interview, Peel had more than suggested 
that the property of the Jesuits could aud would be con- 
fiscated : — 

" ' Mr Peel,' replied Dr Kenny, with great calmness and good. 
humour, ' it may be so : your Government may attempt, and Lave 
tlie power to effect such a violation of the rights of property, but in 
doing so they will also violate the maxim of Lord Chatham, whose 
statesmanship you profess to hold in reverence. As you may not 
recollect the circumstance at this moment, suffer me to recall it to 
you. It having been suggested to him to lay hold of the moneys 
lying in the English funds, in the names of natives of France, with 
whom war was then waging : " No, no," said he ; " if the devil had 
money in the English funds, it should be held safe for him ! " ' " 

Either Mr Peel thought that the Jesuits had as much 
right to fair play as the devil, or, what is more probable, 
he did not consider it expedient to interfere with them, 
for they were left in peace. Wisdom is not hereditary, 
hut undoubtedly prejudice is,- and were not the subject 
of such grave importance, it would he amusing to find the 
son following in the footsteps of the father at the present 
day. 4 









gm 









4 We refer to the following report of some observations made by the 
present baronet, as given in the Standard of July 24, 1872 — 

" Sir R. Peel — I wish to ask the Prime Minister a question springing 
out of that which has just been answered by the noble lord. It will be 






With amusing servility to English opinion the Nero York 
Times followed suit, and on the 30th of July declared 
that- 



iii the recollection of the house, that during the course of the present 
session many questions have been asked respecting the influx of Com- 
munists into this country, and we understand that the Government have 
instructed Lord Lyons to use his best exertions to prevent this influx. 
No doubt the Communists are a very criminal class, but in many cases 
they are misguided, and the victims of circumstances. The question I 
have to put refers to an equally dangerous and obnoxious class. I refer 
to the order of the Jesuits. My question has reference to recent acts of 
spiritual power exercised in Ireland." 

We hope the right hon. member I'or Tamworth will not be obliged to 
put hia partiality for the Communists to a practical test. We should like 
to know very much the "circumstances" to which they have been victims. 
In default of all evidence we must believe that the Jesuits who have 
been expelled from Germany, without one single accusation being proved 
against them, the real victims. The allusion to the Galway trial is 
curious. Even Judge Keogh himself would be puzzled to make out any 
'■Jesuit influence" in that affair. The next thing, we suppose, will be 
to indict the order for it. It is strange how an English gentleman of ordi- 
nary education could be so hopelessly ignorant of cotemporary history. 

We And in the same number of the Standard the following civil 
remarks about eminent Catholics : — 

" The Pope tells us that now he has nothing to look to but the divine 
assistance. Prayer is the instrument which he depends on his followers 
to employ. How delightful a prospect this seems to promise for sober, 
order-loving citizens ; if the Pope and Cardinal Antonelli, the Von 
Krements and Von Kettelers, the Cullens and M'Hales, could only 
devote themselves to prayer, we should be rid of the scandal of a muni ler 
of men, clothed with the highest functions of religion, only opening 
their mouths to calumniate their neighbours, and picture their eternal 
damnation. Let them retire into their closets, and we should escape 
the pernicious influence which these men, by their influence over the 
ignorant masses, add to the other elements of disorganisation wluch now 
abound in the world." 



i . 



"The Jesuits and the International Society nmy now rank as the 
two bugbears of the Courts of Europe." 

There were Whalleys and Newdegates in the House in 
thuse days, and there probably will be until the advent of 
Macaulay's New Zealander. Mr Peel tried to calm their 
perturbed spirits by giving them some information con- 
cerning his interview with Dr Kenny; but he was neither 
sufficiently honourable nor sufficiently large-minded to give 
full details. 

O'Connell's popularity was now rapidly approaching its 
highest point. At a meeting in Louth, 7th August 1813, a 
vote of thanks was proposed to him, James Kieran, Esq., 
being in the chair; at Kilkenny the same compliment 
was paid to him, Captain Byran in the chair ; at Tralee, 
Dominick Rice, Esq., presided; at Wexford, Harry Lambert, 
Esq. ; at Galway, Lord Ffrench ; at Cork, John Gal way, 
Esq. At the latter place O'Connell was chaired home after 
a public meeting, and addressed the people " from the 
windows of Laffin's, the batter." 

On the 14th January 1815, the manufacturers of the 
Liberty of Dublin presented him with a silver cup, richly 
carved. 

Faction has been the curse of Ireland, and it might be 
expected that O'Connell's popularity wuuld procure him 
many enemies. The class of men who now try to hunt 
down a Catholic justice of the peace, or custos rotidorum, 
by swearing informations, if he gives them even the ex- 




case of an indiscretion of language or action, were then 
ready and eager to shoot him down. It need not be said 
that duelling was the order of the day, and it was too 
often made an excuse for getting rid of a political op- 
ponent. Even in elections, an attorney was selected quite 
as often with a view to his skill with pistols as to his skill 
with his tongue. 6 







« At an election for the county Wexford in 1&10, when Messrs Alcock 
and Colclough were rival candidates, some tenants of a friend of Alcock 
declared their intention of voting for Colclough. « Receive their votes 
at your peril ! " exclaimed Alcock. Colclough replied that he had not 
asked their votes, and that he certainly would not be bullied into reject- 
ing them. Alcock thereupon challenged Colclough to fight ; they met 
on the next day ; the crowd who assembled on the ground included 
many magistrates ; Colclough was shot through the heart— and Alcock, 
having thus got rid of his opponent, was duly returned- for the county.' 
He was tried at the next assizes for the murder of Colclough. Baron 
Smith publicly protested against finding him guilty, and the jury una- 
nimously acquitted him. 

"King Bagenal" was one of the most noted duellists of the day. 
He earned his sobriquet of king, from the extent of property which 
he possessed, and over which he ruled in most despotic fashion. 

It is said that Bagenal accepted a challenge in his seventy-ninth year, 
only stipulating that he should fight sitting in his arm - chair ; and 
that, as his infirmities prevented early rising, the meeting should take 
place in the afternoon. " Time was," said the old man with a sigh, 
"that I would have risen before daybreak to fight at sunrise— but we 
cannot do these things at seventy-eight. Well, Heaven's will be done ! " 
They fought at twelve paces. Bagenal wounded his antagonist severely; 
the arm of the chair in which he sat was shattered, but he escaped un- 
hurt ; and he ended the day with a glorious carouse, tapping the claret, 
we may presume as usual, by firing a pistol at the cask. 

The traditions of Dunleckny allege that when Bagenal, in the course 

2 £ 



\i 



m 



O'Connell's duel with D'Esterre was one of the most 
noted incidents in his eventful life; but, it was the fact of 
O'Connell's having fought the duel, and the consequences 
that ensued, which has made the event so famous, rather 
than any circumstances connected with its origin. 

The Catholic Board had been suppressed, and those 
members of the aristocracy who had sanctioned or sup- 
ported it hitherto, were at least very willing to withdraw 
from a position which promised them no immediate ad- 
vantage, and which compromised them in the opinions of 
the Protestant nobility. Their conduct was natural, if 
it was not national. They could not be expected to under- 



of his tour through Europe, visited the petty court of Mecklenbnrgh- 
Strelitz, the Grand Duke, charmed with his magnificence and the repu- 
tation of his wealth, made him an oiler of the hand of the fair Charlotte, 
who, being politely rejected by King Bagenal, was afterwards accepted 
by King George III. 

For all lovers of good horses, good dogs, and good wines, Dunleckny 
was a terrestrial paradise. His stud was magnificent, and he had a large 
number of capital hunters at the service of visitors who were not pro- 
vided with steeds of their own. He derived great delight from encou- 
raging the young men who frequented his house to drink, hunt, and 
solve points of honour at twelve paces.* Enthroned at Dunleckny, he 
gathered around him a host of spirits congenial to his own. He had a 
•tender affection for pistols ; a brace of saw-handles were often laid 
before him on the dinner-table. After dinner, the claret was produced 
in an unbroached cask. Bagenal's practice was to tap the cask with a 
bullet from one of his own pistols, whilst he kept the other in terrorem 
for any of the convives who should fail in doing ample justice to the 
wine. 

* " Ireland and her Agitators," p. 6. 



iv- 












6tand sufferings which they did not feel, nor to resent 
slights that were not offered to them. Their religion, 
indeed, taught them the duty of a deep, personal interest 
in the poor, and in all human suffering; but there are nut 
many who carry out practically to the fullest extent what 
they know in theory. They were, perhaps, unduly blamed 
by the leading agitators of the time ; at least, there was 
scarcely sufficient allowance made for their position. 

Agitation, unless it is successful, is seldom considered 
respectable. Those men who had found their way to 
court, and who were now received on friendly terms by 
their ecpials in rank, did not care to have the contempt of 
failure thrown on them, or to mix themselves up with what 
was considered discreditable by those whose opinions they 
valued most. It was enough for them to bear the brand of 
a religion which they would not forsake, though they were 
fain to keep it out of sight. If to this stigma they added 
that of political discontent, and, above all, of any sympathy 
with their Irish fellow-subjects, if they were agitators, 
or their Catholic co-religionists if they were English, it 
would be an additional stigma wlxch they did not feel 
disposed to bear. There are few things which men feel 
more than social discredit. Men who would die martyrs 
at the stake for their religion, if they were compelled to 
choose between apostacy and God, would be guilty of 
pitiful moral cowardice when some sneer or taunt was 
flung at them for it. or at those who were more faith- 



ful to it than themselves, and who helong to a race which 
the great ones of the world hold in undisguised contempt. 

In consequence of these difficulties O'Connell held a 
meeting in Capel Street in January 1815. The proceed- 
ings were conducted without any formality, the gentlemen 
merely entering their names in a book which was opened 
for the purpose. At another meeting held during the 
same month, and at the same place, O'Connell used these 
words : — 

" I am convinced that the Catholic cause has suffered by neglect 
of discussion. Had the petition been last year the subject of de- 
bate, we should not now see the beggarly Corporation of Dublin 
anticipating our efforts by a petition of an opposite tendency. The 
Duke of Sussex in the Lords, and Mr Whitbred in the Commons, 
appear to me persons worthy to be entrusted with our petition." 

Mr D'Esterre belonged to the Guild of Merchants. 
He had been at sea in his early life, and did not bear a 
very high character. During the mutiny of the Nore, he 
was tried by the sailors, and sentenced to be hanged. At 
the last moment they offered him his life if he would join 
them. The rope was then round his neck. With coarse 

courage he exclaimed, " Hang away, and be d d." 

They spared him, nevertheless ; he little thought, for what 
other death. 

The words used by O'Connell were scarcely sufficient 
even in those days for an affair of honour; very much 
stronger language was used with impunity by public men 
to each other, and condoned by public opinion, but Mr D'Es- 



yj 






A 




terre had " method in his rudeness." He hoped for place 
and pension, and he was sure of his reward, if he obliged 
the Government by getting rid of their most formidable 
opponent; probably, too, his petty vanity was gratified at the 
prospect of publicity, and as he was a first-rate shot, he 
had little apprehension as to the result. O'Connell was 
not a duellist ; he was eminently a man of peace. It has 
been the fashion with English writers to talk of him as a 
swaggering bravado — his conduct proved him precisely the 
reverse. He was then pre-eminently the peacemaker of 
the Catholic party in their early struggles, as he was pre- 
eminently the peacemaker in Ireland's most trying days. 
We are not about to justify O'Connell for fighting a duel, 
but if ever a duel could be justifiable, it was so in the cir- 
cumstances in which he was placed. 

D'Esterre did his pitiful best to make O'Connell the 
aggressor. He paraded Dublin day after day with a horse- 
whip in his hand, and coarse language in his tongue ; but 
O'Connell was too prudent to be caught by the wily Orange- 
man. Every gentleman was asking his friend significantly 
had " they " met yet ? The streets were thronged ; busi- 
ness was almost suspended ; the yelping cur was snapping 
at the heels of the lordly lion, but the lion kept his 
distance. 

The civic authorities were gratified, though they dared not 
openly applaud just yet. D'Esterre's iriends hired the 
window of a house in Grafton Street, the fashionable and 






D'ESTERRE AND O'COXXELL, 



in some degree also the business resort of the day. They 
hoped to see D'Esterre horse-whip O'Connell; it does not 
seem to have occurred to them that there would be two 
actors in the performance — that, before the miserable 
aggressor could have lifted his whip, he would probably have 
found himself flung into the highway with one little effort 
of O'Connell's powerful arm. 

As D'Esterre could not provoke an assault, he was 
obliged to send a challenge. On the 26th February 1815, 
he addressed O'Connell thus : — 

"11 Bachelors' Walk, 2Gth January 1815. 

" Sir, — Carrick's paper of the 23d instant (in its report of the 
debates of a meeting of Catholic gentlemen, on the subject of a peti- 
tion) states, that you have applied the appellation of beggarly to the 
corporation of this city, calling it a beggarl;/ corporation — and there- 
fore, as a member of that body, and feeling how painful such is, I 
beg leave to inquire whether you really used or expressed yourself 
in any such language? I feel the more justified in calling on you 
on this occasion, as such language was not warranted or provoked by 
anything on the part of the corporation ; neither was it consistent 
with the subject of your debate, or the deportment of the other 
Catholic gentlemen who were present ; and though I view it so in- 
consistent in every respect, I am in hopes the editor is under error, 
and not you. I have further to request your reply in the course of 
the evening, and remain, sir, your obedient servant, 

" J. N. D'Esterre. 

" To Counsellor O'Connell, Merrion Square." 

Mr O'Connell's answer was as follows : — 

" Merrion Square, 27th January 1815. 
" Sir, — In reply to your letter of yesterday, and without either 
admitting or disclaiming the expression respecting the Corporation of 















Dublin in the print to which you allude, I deem it right to inform 
you that, from the calumnious manner in which the religion and 
character of the Catholics of Ireland are treated in that body, no 
terms attributed to me, however reproachful, can exceed the con- 
temptuous feelings I entertain for that body in its corporate 
capacity ; although doubtless it contains many valuable persons, 
whose conduct as individuals (I lament) must necessarily be con- 
founded in the acts of a general body. I have oidy to add that 
this letter must close our cornspondence on t/iis subject. — I am, 
&«•. ic -> Daniel O'Co.nnell." 

" To J. N. D'Esterre, Esq., 1 1 Rachelors' Walk." 

For some reason, by no means apparent, D'Esterre 
wished to continue the correfpondence. He sent another 
letter to O'Connell, but though the handwriting was dis- 
guised, the author was suspected, and it was returned un- 
read by Mr James O'Connell. 

" On Sunday, Mr D'Esterre sent a note to Mr uames O'Connell, 
containing 'disrespectful observations' on himself and his brother, 
and he sent his friend Captain O'Mullane to Mr D'Esterre to say, 
that after he adjusted his affair with his brother, he would bring him 
to account for his conduct to himself peculiarly. 

" Captain O'Mullane at the same time intimated, that Counsellor 
O'Connell was astonished at his not hearing in what he conceived t/ie 
proper wmj from Mr D'Esterre. 

"Nothing further happened on Sunday, and on Monday morning, 
Mr Lidwell, who remained here several days to be the friend of Mr 
O'Connell, though some members of his family were seriously indis- 
posed, left town for home, despairing of any issue being put to the 
controversy. 

" Monday passed on, and on Tuesday considerable sensation was 
created by a rumour, that Mr D'Esterre was advised to go to the 
Four Courts, to offer Mr O'Connell personal violence. Ne'.,her of 
the parties came in contact, but it seems that Mr D'Esterre was met 



on one of the quays by Mr Richard O'Gorman, who remonstrated 
with him by stating, that he conceived he was pursuing a very un- 
usual sort of conduct. ' You conceive,' said he, 'that you received 
an offence from Mr O'Connell ; if so, your course is to demand 
satisfaction. This, I understand, you have not as yet done, but if 
you are now resolved to do it, I undertake, on forfeiture of having a 
riddle made of my body, to have Mr O'Connell on his ground in half 
an hour.' This occurred about three o'clock, but no challenge 
followed." 6 

The excitement increased every moment. O'Connell 
paraded the streets at four o'clock with a few friends, but 
such crowds surrounded him that he was obliged to retire 
into a private house. 

Judge Day now came to place him under arrest ; at the 
same time, he said, he would be satisfied if Mr O'Connell 
would pledge his honour to proceed no further in the 
business, which, considering that O'Connell was not the 
aggressor, was extremely considerate. 

O'Connell said what was true, that he was not the 
aggressor, and did not intend to be the aggressor. One of 
O'Connell's friends who was present, the famous Barney 
Coile, said — 

" ' That it was very insulting that a ruffian should be allowed to 
parade the streets of Dublin during two days, in order to assault a 
worthy man who is the father of six children — and this without any 
hindrance or interruption from the magistrates.' 

" 'I hope, sir, you are satisfied,' said Judge Day, 'that the laws 
are competent to reach all such offenders.' 



6 Dublin Evening Pott. Full reports of each day's proceedings was 
given in this paper. 



" ' By my soul,' replied Barney Coile, ' I am very well satisfied 
the laws can reach us if we transgress ; but during the two days he 
has been seeking to effect a breach of the peace, the laws have not 
reached that fellow.' " 

At nine o'clock on "Wednesday evening, Sir E. Stanley 
■waited on O'Connell at his house in Merrion Square, and a 
hostile meeting was arranged, — O'Connell having secured 
the services of Major MacNamara. The place selected was 
Lord Ponsonby's demesne, about thirteen miles from 
Dublin, the time three o'clock in the afternoon. 

O'Connell was on the spot punctually, attended by his 
brother James, and some other friends. He was as cool 
and collected as if he were about to address a jury, instead 
of entering on a deadly conflict. As his carriage passed 
over a broken-down bridge, he turned to his brother James 
and said, " See, James, how little care they take of the 
lives of his Majesty's subjects." 

D'Esterre was later on the ground, which was white 
with snow. The seconds took some time making arrange- 
ments, and Sir Edward Stanley was in considerable per- 
turbation as to the result if O'Connell should fall, a 
consummation of which we may presume he had not the 
slightest doubt. Major MacNamara occupied himself 
giving O'Connell a number of directions. The Liberator 
could stand it no longer. " My dear fellow, I have one 
earnest request to make you," he said, addressing his 
second with that impressive solemnity which no man could 



® 

g 

w 



^ 



better assume. The major listened for his friend's last words 
with evident anxiety. " Let me beg of you " — he paused 
— " let me beg of you," he reiterated, "not to say another 
word to me until the duel is over." 

O'Connell's keen eye took in all around. He saw his 
tailor, Jerry MacCarthy on the ground, and exclaimed, 
" Well, Jerry ; I never missed you at an aggregate meet- 
ing." 

The Dublin Evening Post of the day thus describes the 
last act of the tragedy : — 

" The friends of botb parties retired, and the combatants, having 
a pistol in each hand, with directions to discharge them at their 
discretion, prepared to fire. They levelled, and before the lapse of 
a second both shots were heard. Mr D'Esterre fired first, and 
missed. Mr O'ConnelPs shot followed instantaneously, and took 
effect in the groin of his antagonist, about an inch below the hip. 
Mr D'Esterre, of course, fell, and both the surgeons hastened to 
him. They found that the ball had traversed the hip, passed 
through the bladder, and possibly touched the spine. It could not 
be found. There was an immense effusion of blood. All parties 
prepared to move towards home, and arrived in town before eight 
o'clock. We were extremely glad to perceive that Major MacNa- 
mara and many respectable gentlemen assisted in procuring the 
best accommodation for the wounded man. They sympathised in 
his sufferings, and expressed themselves to Sir Edward Staniey as 
extremely well pleased that a transaction which they considered 
most uncalled for, had not terminated in the death of D'Esterre. 
We need not describe the emotions which burst forth along the road 
and through the town when it was ascertained that Mr O'Connell 
was safe." 

A body of cavalry was despatched to the scene of con- 



m 



■ 



IjMrt 



■rh 

m 



GOD BE PRAISED, IRELAND IS SAFE." 443 






flict, but, either by accident or design, they arrived too late 
for active interference. It was generally believed at the 
time that they were sent for the purpose of protecting Mr 
D'Esterre in case he should have shot O'Connell. They met 
O'Connell's carriage returning, but did not recognise the 
occupants, and inquired if Mr O'Connell had been shot. Mr 
James O'Connell replied, " No ; Mr D'Esterre has unfor- 
tunately fallen." 

D'Esterre only lived a few days ; and to his latest breath 
O'Connell never forgave himself for the fatality. He 
pensioned the widow and daughter, and on one occasion 
conducted a case for Mrs D'Esterre in the law courts, at 
serious loss and inconvenience to himself. In after life, 
also, it was observed that he never passed the house once 
occupied by that gentleman, without raising bis hat, and 
breathing a prayer for his eternal welfare. 

O'Connell was at first apprehensive of legal proceedings, 
but he received an early and polite assurance from Sir 
Edward Stanley that no such thing was contemplated. 
When the intelligence was brought to Archbishop Murray 
by Mr James O'Connell, he exclaimed, " God be praised ; 
Ireland is safe." Yet, much as Ireland would have 
mourned O'Connell's death even then, how little could 
even the most prescient have anticipated what he would yet 
do for her. 7 

1 As the party travelled back to Dublin they were all silent until near 
the city, when O'Connell said, " I fear he must be dead, he fell so 



1 



Iti the year 1816 some agrarian outrages occurred, for 
which, of course, blame was laid on every oue except those 
who were really guilty. The people, already crushed 
down to the lowest depths of poverty, were compelled to 
pay tithes, not, indeed, of what they had, but of what 
they had not. 

The unhappy peasantry were denounced, guilty or not 
guilty, and, of course, " thepriests" were to blame. The " Nb- 
Popery" cry was always serviceable, and it was easily echoed. 
A Dublin Government paper had the following paragraph, 
which O'Connell quoted at a public meeting : — 

" I will lay before the reader such sp< cimens of the popish super- 
stition as will convince him that the treasonable combinations 
cemented by oaths, and the nocturnal robbery and assassination 
which /aire prevailed for many years past in Ireland, and still exist 
in many parts of it, are produced as a necessary consequence by its 
intolerant and sanguinary principles." 

It was necessary to have something like a fact, to 
prove the assertion, and the fact was forthcoming in due 
time. 

The Rev. John Hamilton, an Orangeman, and a magi- 
strate, was Protestant curate of Roscrea. The Monaghan 

suddenly ; where do you think lie was hit ?" The docter replied, " In 
the head." " That cannot be," replied O'Cqnnell ; " I aimed low ; it 
must have entered near the thigh." Mrs D'Esterre went to England 
with her daughter, and married a brother of Mr Guinness', the cele- 
brated brewer, and founder of the fortunes of the Guinness family. 
Miss D'Esterre, who was an accomplished musician, married a son of 
her step-father, by his first wife. 



i«Sr 



11 



I 



HAMILTON AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 445 



m 



m 



I 



4 






Militia, all Orangemen, were quartered there, and he 
devoted himself to superintending them as they scoured the 
country, playing party tunes, and doing their best to exas- 
perate the people. But the people would not be exasperated, 
and then a scheme of so diabolical a character was planned, 
that if there were not the evidence of a court of law to prove 
the facts, we might pardon any reader, Catholic or Pro- 
testant, for discrediting the whole narrative. 

Mr Hamilton deliberately set himself to get up a plot. He 
obtained the services of a villain named Dyer, who was only 
less contemptible than himself, because he only carried out 
what his master planned. First, he swore that the Catholics 
had made a plot to murder all the Protestants, and that they 
held secret meetings for this purpose. A lie or two, more 
or less, did not matter, so he swore to time and place. These 
" startling disclosures " excited much alarm, but this was 
not sufficient. Dyer, or rather Mr Hamilton, wanted a 
victim. He had his eye on one, a respectable Catholic dis- 
tiller ; so he next proceeded to get a regular spy from 
Dublin. It was not difficult, for the Rebellion had provided 
a crop of infamous characters who lived on falsehood. 

The three worthies then arranged their plan. Evidently 
it was not the first plot of the kind which the " detective " 
had carried out. A straw figure was attired in a suit of 
Mr Hamilton's clothes, and placed sitting at the table on 
the ground-floor. The back was turned to the window ; the 
figure faced the table, on which lay an open Bible. Two 



IB 



rrM 



0-: 



candles were lighted, for as the deed required darkness out- 
side, it was done at night. Dyer and Halpin, the spy, fired 
at the figure through the window. The commotion was ter- 
rible ; it was soon known through the town that the rev. 
magistrate had been shot at while reading the Sacred Scrip- 
tures, and that he had made a most miraculous escape. 

As Mr Hamilton was a magistrate, he could act as he 
pleased, and he at once called out the militia, and had the 
Egans arrested. They were bailed out next morning 
witli great difficulty ; but on the 11th July 1816, he arrested 
them again, and actually succeeded in having them brought 
to trial. A special commissiou was held in Clonmel. Lord 
Norbury and Baron George presided. Charles Kendal 
Burke, the Solicitor-General, was crown prosecutor. 

Dyer told his story admirably, and gave detailed evidence 
of the midnight meetings, the military exercises, and all 
the incidents necessary to complete the accusation. Some 
glimpses of light, however, were obtained in cross-examina- 
tion. It was proved that Dyer was in receipt of five shillings 
a week for suppressing evidence against Francis Cotton, who 
was tried for murder. The Rev. John Hamilton was the 
next witness. He had employed too many to help him in his 
villainous plot, and something of the truth was ascertained. 
On cross-examination he was obliged to admit the truth. He 
tried to excuse himself by adding subterfuge to falsehood, but 
it was useless. No attempt was made to punish him ; but 
Dyer was indicted for wilful and corrupt perjury. The 






Wll 



I. 






o 



grand jury, however, ignored the bill, and Dyer went forth 
on the world to plot new schemes for the destruction of 
innocent men. 

We do not hear, however, in those times, evil as they 
were, that the most holy rites of religion were profaned for 
such purposes ; that method of treachery was reserved for 
our own time. 

In 1815, O'Connell was engaged in another "affair of 
honour," the circumstances of which were "singularly 
complicated," according to the public reports of the pro- 
ceedings. 

O'Connell "dared" Mr Peel to attack him in his pre- 
sence, as lie had attacked him behind his back. Sir Charles 
Saxton thereupon waited on O'Connell for his friend, Mr 
Peel. After a war of words, both colloquially and on 
paper, in which both parties seemed willing to avoid a 
hostile meeting, the hostile meeting was arranged by 
" friends," who were then unnecessarily obliging on such 
occasions. 

Sir Charles Saxton and Mr Lidwell, O'Conuell's friends, 
contrived to get into a cross quarrel on their own account. 
In the meantime, the families of O'Connell and Lidwell 
became greatly alarmed. Mrs O'Connell gave information 
to the sheriff privately, and had her husband arrested. 
Miss Lidwill protected her father in the same way. 

The following squib on the subject was attributed to C. 
J. Burke, Esq. : — 




" Our heroes of Erin escape from the slaughter, 
By revereing-the Hebrew command, 
One honours his wife, and the other his daughter, 
That their days may be long in the land." 

Meanwhile Sir Charles Saxton and Mr Peel had left the 
country. O'Connell was bound to keep the peace, under a 
penalty of £10,000. O'Connell, however, procured an- 
other friend, Mr Bennet, and they arranged to have a 
meeting at Ostend. Peel was mortally afraid of the result. 
It was known now that O'Connell was one of the best 
shots in Ireland, and the fate of D'Esterre was already 
fresh in the public mind. 

O'Connell reached London safely, but every effort was 
being made to capture him. A Mr Lidwill, who was sin- 
gularly like him, was seized. This gentleman was a pro- 
vision merchant, and occupied the house which had 
belonged to D'Esterre. In Calais, another unfortunate 
gentleman was seized also. 

Mr Peel's father, however, had sharpened the wits of 
the London police by an offer of fifty guineas each to those 
who would succeed in capturing O'Connell ; and on the 
morning of the 19th September they broke into the hotel 
in the Strand'at four o'clock, and captured him as he 
was preparing to start for Dover. O'Connell was again 
bound over to keep the peace, and returned at once to 
Ireland. 

Mr Lidwill and Sir Charles Saxton had a meeting at 
Calais, where Mr Lidwill, who had been the challenger. 



received Sir Charles Saxton's fire, and then discharged his 
own pistol in the air. 

In 1819, O'Connell wrote his first public letter to the 
people of Ireland. During the preceding year, the 
country had been in a fearful state of distress and excite- 
ment. When the war ceased, the higb prices obtained for 
provisions fell at once, but the Irish landlords still insisted 
on obtaining the high rents. The result was necessarily 
disturbance; but Mr Peel projected and perfected apian by 
which the cries of the people might be stifled, no matter 
how great the cause which drew them forth. " In Ireland," 
said Mr Peel, when he proposed his measure to the English 
house, " in Ireland, they do not possess the greatest of all 
blessings — a resident gentry having a community of in- 
terest with the cultivators of the soil." So, as they had 
not this blessing, he determined to give one of his own 
fashioning, and he sent them 25,000 armed constables. 
In consequence of this singular method of supplying an 
acknowledged want, and in memory of the originator of the 
scheme, these men obtained the sobriquet of" Peelers." 

There was a trial about the same period in England, at 
which eminent counsel were engaged on both sides. Dis- 
content was general in that country also, though there 
was infinitely less cause for it than in Ireland. A Dr 
Watson excited a riot for which he was tried. The 
Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General were counsel 
for the Crown ; the latter, Sir Robert Gifford, was held in 

2f 



i 



■V: 



m 






JUSTICE IN ENGLAND. 



very high esteem by the legal gentlemen of the period. 
"Watson was defended by Sir Charles "Wetherell, an ultra 
Tory, but he had been disappointed by the Government, 
and, for the nonce, was prepared to defend his client con 
amore, and with an energy beyond what mere professional 
duty required. He was assisted by Mr Sergeant Copley, 
better known as Lord Lyndhurst. 

A spy had been employed in the case, but it was proved 
at the trial that he was a man of infamous character, a3 
such men always are. Sir Charles Wetherell asked the 

jury— 

" Will you suffer the purity of British jurisprudence to depend 
upon the credit of that indescribable villain ? Will you add to the 
bloody memory he has already earned i Will } T ou encourage the trade 
and merchandise of a man who lives on blood ? Will you — the 
guardians and protectors of British law — will you suffer death to be 
dealt out by him as he pleases?" 

• The jury gave evidence of their opinion by acquitting the 
man whose life had been so cruelly sworn away. It was 
only in Ireland that men like Mr Hamilton, who were 
at once perjurers and spies, were allowed to " deal out 
death " as they pleased, and where villains like Dyer and 
his companions were acquitted by Orange juries. 





a 



[La 



■ • 

9^ J 



Cjmptcr ftcnilj. 



' 



LOYALTY TO GOD AND THE KINO. 



I520-IS22. 



PANEGYRIC ON GRATTAN — OUTRAGE AT KILMAINHAU — HARCOURT LEES — "PAS- 

TORAL LETTER "FOR 1821— FIRST APPEARANCE OF SHIEL — MR PLUNKET 

ANALYSIS OF MR PLUNKET's BILLS— SPIRITUAL FUNCTIONS AND FREEDOM 
OF THE CLERGY — PROTESTANT BIGOTRY — GEORGE IT. AND QUEEN CAROLINE 

— ROYAL VISIT TO IRELAND LOTAL RECEPTION AT DUBLIN — THE IRISH 

FEOPLB — PRESENTATION OF O'CONNELL AT COURT — IRONY OF LORD BYRON 
— WELLESLEY AND HIS IRISH POLICY — ORANGE ORGIES— THE BEEFSTEAK 
CLUB INTERFERED WITH, AND ITS REVENGE — WELLESLEY AND THE ORANGE- 
MEN — A CATHOLIC TRIUMPH. 



I 



B 



1 




RATTAN died in 1820, and 
O'Connell took the oppor- 
tunity of a public meeting for 
promoting the election of his 
son as member for Dublin, to 
pronounce a magnificent panegyric on 
his virtue and devotion to Ireland. He 
quoted on this occasion Grattan's own mem- 
orable expression, " He watched by the 
cradle of his country's greatness, and he 
followed her hearse ; " and then reverting 
to his favourite subject, the assistance given by 
Protestants, he added, " Who shall now speak 
to me of religious animosity ? To any such I will answer, 



MEETIXG AT KILMA IX HAM. 



by pointing to the honoured tomb of Grattan, and I will 
say, There sleeps a man, a member of the Protestant com- 
munity, who died in the cause of his Catholic fellow- 
countrymen ! " 

In the conclusion of his speech, he adverted to the effort 
to excite dissension which was made by some of the oppo- 
site candidate's party, who boasted of wearing Orange 
favours, and asked, Who was the most loyal man, the one 
who would unite the people round the throne in peace and 
harmony, or the one who would weaken the resources of 
the constitution by excluding their fellow-subjects from 
its advantages ? He concluded by begging the people to do 
their duty, and to let their motto be, " Grattan and 
Ireland." 

George IV. had succeeded to the throne in this year, 
and was actively employed in the prosecution of his un- 
happy Queen. His accession was made the occasion for a 
" loyal address " from the Government party in Ireland, 
and a public assembly was convened for the purpose of 
adopting it. The Court-house at Kilmainham, near 
Dublin, was selected as the place of meeting, and a guard 
of fifty policemen was stationed at the door. As Lord 
Howth and the other promoters of the proceedings ap- 
proached the spot, they were more alarmed than gratified to 
see crowds hastening along the roads. But even then they 
were not prepared for what followed. The moment the doors 
were opened, the people crushed in, bearing all before them 



M 

'■--:■- 

§ 






- 






like a raging sea; the police were too few for resistance; 
and in the end, Lord Howth, Lord Frankford, the Sheriff, 
the county members, and Judge Day, were lifted in through 
the open windows on chairs by the police. 

This proceeding did not tend to quiet the assembly, and 
the speeches could not be heard for shouts, and groans, and 
cat-calls, and hurricanes of ironical applause. 

O'Connell and his friends had placed themselves in the 
centre of the hall. He rose up in his giant strength, both 
physical and moral, and declared his dissent. The Sheriff 
asked, was he a freeholder ? He replied : — 

" I am a freeholder of this county. I have a hereditary property 
which, probably, may stand a comparison with the person's who in- 
terrogates me ; and I have a profession which gives me an annual 
income greater than any of the personages who surround the chair 
are able to wring from the taxes." 

A fierce dispute followed; the aristocratic party contrived 
to nominate their own chairman. Lord Cloncurry now 
joined the people, for reasons of his own, and he was nomi- 
nated by them. In the height of the dispute the Sheriff 
contrived to slip out of the court-house and to call in the 
military, whom he had stationed outside without the 
knowledge of the people. Their indignation, when they 
found themselves treated in this fashion, may well be 
imagined. It was, indeed, a sharp, practical commentary 
on the " liberty of the subject " in Ireland. The subject 
abhorred the conduct of the king, and was only desirous 



iVOT EASILY BAFFLED. 



of expressing his abhorrence, if he were obliged to speak 
at all. The rulers of the subject were determined to send 
up a congratulatory address in the name of the subject, 
and were naturally very indignant that he should dare to 
thwart their plans. 

The court was soon cleared. Lord Cloncurry remained 
on the bench where the people had placed him. The 
soldiers, obeying orders, drew their swords at him, and 
pressing forward, forced him from his place, Lord Clon- 
curry having determined that he would yield only to 
compulsion. 

But O'Connell was not so easily bamed. It was, in- 
deed, illegal to hold an open-air meeting, but there was 
a tavern opposite the court-house. O'Connell placed the 
chairman under cover, and the meeting proceeded. Mr 
Burne, a king's counsel, took a prominent part in the 
affair on the popular side. He now addressed the multi- 
tude, and proposed an address. But he looked for it in 
vain. He plunged his hands into one pocket and then 
into another; he looked hither and thither. His address 
was gone, lost in the fray, or dexterously filched from 
him. O'Connell asked what he was looking for. " The 
address," he stated. " What has become of the address ? " 
" Oh, here it is," replied O'Connell, quietly putting a 
paper in his hands which he had, and which was adopted, 
and which was written by O'Connell himself. There were 
some strong expressions in it which had not been in 





Burne's copy ; for instance, the prosecution of the QueeD 
was denounced as " unconstitutional and dangerous." 

History does not say if O'Connell had anything to do 
with the abstraction of the original address, so we may 
leave him the benefit of the doubt. On the 2d of July 
1821, O'Connell held another meeting, "to consider the 
best steps to be taken as to the outrage on Saturday at 
Kilmainham." 

The Protestant aristocratic party convened another 
assemb'y of their own. An eccentric Protestant clergy- 
man, Sir Harcourt Lees, wrote a letter to the public papers, 
in which he said — 

" I have just returned from one of the most numerous and respect- 
able meetings of Protestant noblemen and gentlemen of the county 
of Dublin ever assembled together, for the purpose of assuring a 
deeply-injured sovereign of their iuviolable attachment to his 
august person and the constitution of the British empire." 

But Sir Harcourt was not at the meeting. His appear- 
ance was remarkable, and he had been actually seen by a 
considerable number of persons in a different place. He 
took che accusation of falsehood very coolly, and only advised 
his censor " to purchase a telescope, and watch his niove- 
ments with more attention in future." 

O'Connell's " pastoral " letter for the year of grace 1821 
excited an immense commotion. Mr Shiel was just then 
making his appearance in public life, and either from 
personal vanity, or a desire to break a lance with a man so 




famous as the Liberator, he ventured the dangerous experi- 
ment of attacking him. The result was not encouraging 
for a second attempt. Few men have been possessed of 
O'Connell's power of dissecting an adversary, and then 
holding up to public ridicule, on his scalpel, the choicest 
morsels of his opponent's slaughtered eloquence. 
O'Connell's letter commenced thus : — 

To the Catholics of Ireland. 

"Merrion Square, Dublin, 1st January 1821. 

" Fellow-Countrymen, — After another year of unjust degrada- 
tion and oppression, I again address you. We have lived, another 
year, the victims of causeless injustice. Our lives wear away, and we 
still continue aliens in our native land. Everything changes around 
us. Our servitude alone is unaltered and permanent. 

" The blood runs cold, and the heart withers, when we reflect on 
the wanton prolongation of our sufferings. The iron sinks into our 
very souls at the helpless and hopeless nature of our lot. To the 
severest of injuries is added the most cruel of insults, and we are 
deprived of the miserable consolation of thinking that our enemies 
deem themselves justified by any necessity or any excuse for con- 
tinuing our degradation. 

" No, my fellow-countrymen, no ; there is no excuse for the in- 
justice that is done us. There is no palliation for the iniquitous 
system under which we suffer. It contradicts the first right of 
men and Christians— the right of worshipping our God according 
to the dictates of our conscience. Nay, this odious system goes 
farther ; it converts the exercise of that right into a crime, and it 
inflicts punishment for that which is our first and most sacred duty 
— to worship our Creator in the sincerity of conscience. 

" For this crime, and for this crime alone, we are punished and 
degraded — converted into an inferior class in our native land, and 






K 



HP 



-v. 



1 

la ■ 









M 



fl 






t-1 
i'v.'i, 

'I 



doomed to perpetual exclusion. Our enemies cannot accuse us of 
any other offence — other crime we have committed none. Even 
the foolish charge of intemperance — a charge which was only a 
symptom of that contempt in which our enemies hold us — even the 
absurd accusation of intemperance is now abandoned, and our de- 
gradation continues without necessity, without excuse, without 
pretence, without palliation." 

He then showed them how some " honest, men " might 
be deluded into the belief that the profession of the Catho- 
lic religion was inconsistent with civil or religious liberty. 
He showed from the history of the past, and the annals of 
the present, how utterly unfounded this theory was. He 
stated that France had a Protestant prime minister, who, 
if he were in England, could not fill the office of a parish 
constable without sweariug that the mass was impious, 
and he who heard it an idolater. 

O'Counell's object was simply to keep his countrymen 
from sinking into the apathy of indifference or despair, an 
apathy which would have been hopelessly fatal to a people 
who had not yet obtained more than a modicum of freedom. 
His reply to Shiel must have produced laughter even 
while it reiterated the arguments of the letter which that 
gentleman had so unwisely attacked. " Truly, I am at a 
loss," replied O'Connell, " to know how I could have pro- 
voked the tragic wrath and noble ire of this iambic rhapso- 
dist." 

However O'Connell may have been at a loss on this 
subject, he certainly was never at a loss for a stinging 



epithet, and Mr Shiel's rhapsody had deserved one. 8 He 
called O'Connell " a flaming fragment," " lava," " a straw 
in ambre," " a rushlight with a fitful fire," " a sophist 
drowning in confutation," " a column of fiery vapour and 
heterogeneous materials." Mr Shiel's appellations were 
certainly " heterogeneous," and it is difficult to understand 
how a man who has left so much eloquence on record, could 
have written such rubbish. O'ConnelPs shrewd conjecture 
that " he was not half so mad as he pretended to be," is 
probably the key to the enigma. 

The whole contioversy arose out of O'Oonnell's objec- 
tion to Mr Plunket's policy. After Grattan's death, and 
indeed for some time previous, Mr Plunket was looked 
upon as the leader of the Liberal party in the House of 
Commons, or rather of such members of the Liberal party 
as were disposed to grant any measure of relief to Ireland. 
Mr Plunket was, on the whole, a disinterested patriot, but 
he could not understand the position or the necessities of 
those he desired to benefit, as O'Connell did. He was 
anxious to obtain some measure of relief for Irish Catholics, 
or, to speak more correctly, for the Irish nation, for the 
nation was Catholic ; but he could not understand, and pro- 
bably no Protestant could understand, that the Irish nation 
would accept no temporal relief, however desirable, however 



8 Shiel's famous speech in reply to Lord Lyndhurst's statement that 
"the Irish were aliens in blood, in birth, and in religion," was one of 
those chosen for recitation at Harrow on the last speech day. 




necessary, at the expense of their spiritual interests. Mat- 
ters, which to him were trifles, or at best mere questions of 
opinion, were to them of vital importance. He forgot, or 
be could not be made to understand, that every detail of 
their religion was all important, because with them reli- 
gion was not a matter of opinion, but an object of faith. 

They believed that the Pope was the divinely-appointed 
Vicar of Christ upon earth, that to his authority they were 
obliged to submit in all things spiritual, not because he 
happened to be good or wise, gifted or powerful, but 
because of an immutable decree which they read in Holy 
Writ, " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build 
my Church." For every article of their faith they had 
been persecuted to death for years ; they were still per- 
secuted, not, indeed, to death, but in every position and 
action of life. It was natural, then, they should look with 
no little suspicion on any concession, however desirable, 
to which conditions were attached, which, if they did not 
actually compromise articles of faith, had at least the 
appearance of doing so. 

But there were few men who grasped the bearings of the 
whole subject with O'Connell's precision. He saw the 
insidious nature of the concession, which required that the 
appointment of Catholic prelates should be placed in Pro- 
testant hands, and he set himself to oppose it with a vigour 
which was strengthened and inspired by his perfect know- 
ledge of the danger. 



w 

■ 

'4 



fci 



\V Si 



O'Connell's letters on tliis subject are not less remark- 
able for legal acumen than for theological learning. He 
knew his religion with that intelligent knowledge which is 
at once the support and the source of faith. It has been, 
indeed, objected to him that he was too fond of theological 
discussions, but the objection was rarely made save by those 
who were unable to meet his arguments. 

These letters of O'Connell's were written on circuit, and 
forwarded to the Evening Herald in small portions as they 
were written. 

In his first letter he says : " Mr Plunket's two bills are 
at length before you." He then proceeds to analyse the 
bills with a master hand. The first Act, he said, was cer 
tainly a relief bill ; " if it stood alone it would be received 
with delight by every rational Catholic." Yet he showed that 
the Act was liable to misconstruction, and hence to failure. 
It did not repeal the penal laws, although "it was proposed 
with a view to destroying the effects of these statutes. The 
simpler method undoubtedly would have been to repeal 
them, but parliamentary legislation is seldom characterised 
by simplicity. Besides, there would have been infinite 
difficulty in effecting such a measure. The " moral con- 
sciousness " of that class of men who erect themselves into 
personal sources of infallibility in religious belief would 
have been shocked. The bigots of the day were numerous 
and powerful. They complained, indeed, bitterly of the 
arrogant claims of the Papacy. But they were hopelessly 






m 

Mi 



ignorant;- for there is no ignorance so hopeless as that 
which has its source in prejudice. Their own infallibility 
was to them so certain, that it was, indeed, the only part 
of their creed in which they believed as of Divine right. 
Yet if you asked these men to tell you the grounds on 
which they asserted their infallibility, they could not do 
so. If you asked them why, in the name of common 
sense, they would not permit the right of private judgment 
to their Catholic fellow-creatures, why they would not allow 
them the same liberty of belief which they took care to 
secure for themselves, they could give no rational answer. 

To say that Popery was false because they thought it 
false, was no argument. Where or from whom did they 
get the right to decide so momentous a position? and where 
and from whom did they get the right to subject a fellow- 
creature to any persecution — social, moral, or- physical, 
because he did not believe in their opinions ? 

It would seem, indeed, as if persecution were the only 
proof they had to offer of the truth of their doctrine, and 
the very power to persecute supported them in their self- 
righteous delusion. 

But if Mr Plunket's first Act promised relief, his second 
Act was such as to prevent any Catholic from accepting it. 

O'Connell analysed it thus : — 

" Before I proceed to speak of this second Act in the terms it 
merits, I will give a brief and accurate statement of its contents ; 
and I begin with the title. It is called an Act " To regulate (lie 



intercourse between persona in holy orders professing the Roman 
Catholic relit/ion with the see of Borne.' This title is broken Eng- 
lish and bad grammar. Bat it is infinitely worse. It has all the 
characteristics of complete falsehood — the ' suppressio veri,' the 
' suggestio falsi.' Truth is suppressed, because the principal object 
of the bill does not relate to such intercourse at all ; but is to give 
to the secretary of the Lord Lieutenant the absolute appointment of 
all the bishops and all the deans of the Catholic Church in Ireland. 
Falsehood is suggested — because this is not a bill to regulate the 
intercourse (for regulate means, ' to order by rule'), but it is a bill 
to control, according to caprice, that intercourse, and to control it 
according to the caprice of a Protestant Secretary of State. It is in 
this respect a bill to suppress the necessary intercourse upon matters 
of faith and discipline between that part of the Catholic or universal 
Church of Christ which is in Ireland, and the Pope or visible head 
upon earth of that Church." 

It was no matter of surprise that O'Connell should write 
strongly upon this subject, for, from the time of Patrick, 
when Ireland had been converted by him to the Faith, in- 
tercourse with the Holy See had been kept up with unvary- 
ing affection. If the intercourse of discijiline had ceased, 
the intercourse of communion would have ceased, and Ire- 
land would have been no longer Catholic. To effect this 
was undoubtedly the object of many of the promoters of the 
bill. 

But the oath which was required from the Catholic 
clergy in connection with this bill was not its least objec- 
tionable feature. The language used was ambiguous ; but 
O'Connell showed that whatever might be said of Catholics 
by their enemies, they at least must keep an oath sacredly. 



There could be no mental reservations, no evasions, no non- 
natural interpretation; the oath must be taken in the sense 
in which the framers intended it to be taken. No Catholic 
could take an oath as many Protestants signed the thirty- 
nine articles of their Church ; and if a Catholic were guilty 
of such evasion, the Protestant who practised it himself 
would be the very first to denounce him for it. 

In his third letter, O'Counell shows that if this bill 
passed, the Catholic clergy would be actually obliged to 
derive their faculties from the Government. He does 
not use the word, probably because he knew that it would 
not be understood in its technical sense by those whom he 
addressed, but his argument goes to show this. 

The sixteenth section of the Act required — 

"That every person who shall hereafter be nominated to 
THE OFFICE OF bishop OR DEAN, in the Catholic Church in Ire/and, 
shall, before his consecration or acting as such, give notice to the 
Secretary of the Lord-Lieutenant, and that he shall not be consecrated 
or exercue any functions of bi&hop or dean if such Secretary of the 
Lord- Lieutenant shall inform him in writing that he is con- 

S1DEKED BY HIS MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT TO BB, FOR SOME REASON 
OF A CIVIL NATURE, A PERSON IMPROPER FOR SUCH OFFICE." 

The eighteenth section made it an indictable offence to 
exercise any part of the functions of a dean or bishop, 
without having on his nomination signified the same to 
the Castle, or after he has been disapproved of by the 
Secretary. 

Many members of the Protestaut Established Church 

2g 




M 

m 



2Lk 



complained even then of their hondage to the State, but it 
was a trifle to the bondage which the State sought to exer- 
cise towards the Catholics. 

According to the divinely-appointed discipline of the 
Catholic Church, no man can exercise the sublime func- 
tions of his office, even after his ordination, without receiv- 
ing an express permission to do so from the bishop of the 
diocese in which he wishes to exercise these functions. The 
granting of this permission is technically called giving 
faculties. A priest, by virtue of his ordination, has 
always the power to celebrate Mass ; an apostate priest has 
still this power, even as the apostate Judas was permitted 
to be the means of sacrificing his Master; but no priest can 
celebrate Mass unless he has permission or faculties from his 
bishop, without being guilty of canonical irregularity. And, 
further, so strict are the regulations of the Church in all 
that relates to her divine functions, that no priest can say 
Mass in any other diocese than his own, without permission 
from the bishop of the diocese, or in any parish but his 
own without the further permission of the parish priest. 

The Government now desired to usurp this right, and 
inflict pains and penalties on those who dared to resist its 
usurpation. 

But there was a yet further, and a yet more grievous 
injustice. 

The Catholic priest cannot administer the sacraments, 
cannot hear a confession or give an absolution, without 






93 Sf 









faculties from his ecclesiastical superiors. He has the 
power, by virtue of his ordinatiou, but he has not the right 
to exercise the power. 

The life of the Catholic priest is one long warfare with 
the world, the flesh, and the devil. He is enlisted a sol- 
dier of the Church militant by his ordination, but as a good 
soldier, he must act under orders. There can be no con- 
fusion in the great camp of God's army, and he who 
introduces confusion does the sinner's work. 

There is one exception, and one only, in which the 
Catholic priest may exercise his divinely -given power with- 
out special permission from his divinely-appointed rulers. 
It is in the case of danger of death. When the enemy of 
souls is making his supreme effort to snatch his prey, the 
6oldier needs no longer wait for permission to act. On the 
wayside, in the crowded mart, on the trackless ocean, 
wherever there is a human soul to save, or help in its 
awful passage from time to eternity, there and then the 
Catholic priest must do his office, must give the parting 
soul all the help the Church provides for his perilous 
journey. This is one of the most sacred privileges of the 
priest, and of this privilege — nay, rather of this divine 
right — the new act not only deprived him, but threatened 
him with cruel penalties if he exercised it. 

The bill began with the higher clergy ; had it been 
passed, the history of English persecution of Irish Catholics 
leaves no doubt that its restraints would soon have descended 




\ 



to the lower. The original Veto resolution referred only to 
bishops. Mr Plunket's bill had descended to deans. 

It was idle to say that the Catholic sacraments were 
superstitious, that a Catholic dean who had not " faculties " 
from Government, might let the poor sinner who needed 
his services die unshrived and unannealed; the whole ques- 
tion resolved itself for the Catholic into one single point; 
he could not sacrifice that which he believed to be of divine 
right for any human consideration whatsoever. 

With regard to those who attempted to enforce on others 
that which thay would not have submitted to themselves 
for a single moment, it was merely a natter of intellectual 
obtuseness or unphilosophical bigotry. For a man to stand 
before his fellow-men with the Bible in his hand, and pro- 
claim liberty of conscience to his fellow-men, to accept his 
iuterpretation of the Bible and no other, is to place him- 
self on a throne of individual infallibility ; for if he be not 
individually infallible, by what right*does he require others 
to submit to his opinions ? For a man to enforce these 
opinions by any penal law, however trifling, is an act ol 
the grossest injustice. 

Mr Plunket's bills passed the Lower House, but, happily 
for Ireland, they were thrown out in the Upper House upon 
the second reading. 

Early in July 1821, it was publicly announced that the 
king would visit Ireland, and O'Connell drew up a form of 
requisition for a Catholic meeting, to consider an address. 



S 




But the Catholic nobi'ity were entirely opposed to O'Con- 
nell's plans. They were fearful of compromising: their 
position in any way ; they had little to gain by an amelio- 
ration of the general position of their religious brethren, 
and were naturally anxious to identify themselves as little 
as possible with a proscribed creed. 

George IV. was crowned on the 19th of July 1821. On 
the 10th of July, the Privy Council had refused the appeal 
of the Queen to be crowned with him. With that stubborn 
resolution which she displayed invariably at the wrong- 
time, and in the wrong fashion, she did her pitiful best to 
obtain access to Westminster Abbey. On the 16th, she 
informed the Duke of Norfolk, as earl-marshal, that she 
intended to take her place, and requested that persons 
should be in attendance to conduct her to her seat. She 
sent a further message to say that she would be at the 
Abbey by eight o'clock ; but she was there at six, the most 
forlorn and wretched woman in all that great city. Lord 
Hood was with her, and a faithful friend, but she was re- 
pulsed at every door. One or two kindly voices exclaimed, 
" The Queen for ever!" but the multitude hissed and cried, 
"Shame, shame! go to Bergamo!" 9 It was the last 
blow, and the death-blow. She knew now what her few 
friends had known for long enough, that she would never 
be crowned Queen of England. 

9 Twiss's " Life of Lord Eldon," vol. ii. p. 48. 










THE EIXG SETS OCT FOR IRELAXD. 



She entered the carriage weeping bitterly, and she went 
home to die. 

The King, in the meantime, had set out for Ireland. It 
is difficult to see what could have been his object in tin's 
visit. It may have been personal popularity, but it is 
doubtful if George IV. had sufficient intellect to act on 
any preconcerted plan, even to attain that end. He heard 
of the Queen's danger with'the utmost unconcern ; only he 
had the decency to delay his voyage to Ireland, and to ar- 
range that if he should arrive there before her death his 
entry should be private. 1 

The King landed at Howth on the 12th of August. He 
occupied himself during the passage eating goose-pie, 
drinking whisky, and singing songs, and on his arrival he 
was in the last stage of intoxication. 2 Such delinquencies 
were, however, easily condoned in royalty. He was driven 
to the Viceregal Lodge in the Phoenix Park, and the city 
gave way to exuberant loyalty. It was something to have 

1 Knighton's Memoirs, p. 91. — " The King was nearly lost off the 
Land's End, in one of the yachting expeditions in which he whiled away 
the time. He thus described his danger : — ' The oldest and most expe- 
rienced Bailors were petrified and paralysed.'" 

2 " The passage to Dublin was occupied in eating goose-pie and 
drinking whisky, in which his Majesty partook most abundantly, sing- 
ing many joyous songs, and being in a state, on his arrival, to double in 
sight even the numbers of his gracious subjects assembled on the pier 
to receive him. The fact is, lie was in the last stage of intoxication ; 
however, they got him to the Park.'' — Letter from Mr Freemantle to 
the Marquis of Buckingham — Memoirs of the Court of George IV., voL L 
p. 194 



M 



>L0 









a king in Ireland once more, and a king who had come 
with liberal promises. 

In the meantime, while all this demonstrative loyalty 
was being rendered in Ireland, some of the King's English 
subjects were showing their dislike of his neglect of the 
decencies of life in allowing his Queen to he buried in con- 
tempt. Sir Robert Wilson was made the scapegoat, and on 
the king's return he was dismissed from the army. 

The king remained in retirement a few days, and then 
presented himself in state to his Irish subjects. The 
pageant was arranged for the 17th of August, and such a 
pageant, viewed from point of numbers and enthusiasm, 
was probably never witnessed — Ireland certainly had never 
seen its like. 

The King went in royal procession from one of the finest 
parks in the world to the finest street in the world. He 
passed through Phibsborough, then a part of the country, 
now a continuation of Dublin, through Eccles Street, 
and into Cavendish Row, skirting Rutland Square, and 
entering at the Rotunda. Here, at the head of Sackville 
Street, a pleasant fiction was enacted. • A barrier of ever- 
greens was attached to a wooden frame, so as to shut out 
tlic view of that noble street, and a gate was left in the bar- 
rier or verdant wall, where further progress was denied his 
Majesty, until he had obtained the freedom of the city from 
the Mayor. After the usual ceremonies, carried out with 
the utmost punctilio and with the most magnificent decora- 



tions, the gates were thrown open, and the King permitted 
to enter. 

The sight he witnessed was such as had seldom gladdened 
monarch's heart before. A roar of triumph and welcome 
rose up to the blue heaven above from thousands and tens 
of thousands of people. All the chivalry, all the passion- 
ate loyalty, all the delicate courtesy which ever welcomed a 
stranger — and which can scarcely refuse that welcome even 
to an enemy — had found at last an outlet. They had heard, 
indeed, of kings who ruled over them, of Williams and 
Georges, who were said to govern by the grace of God, but 
who were only known to them by acts which seemed to 
savour a good deal more of the malignity of the devil. 
Here was the King ; in person noble, in manner gracious, 
with just that happy blending of conscious royalty with 
what passed current for the time as affectionate condescen- 
sion. 

The air was rent with acclamations, and the monarch 
enhanced the favour of his kingly presence a thousand-fold 
by clasping to his heart the large bunch of shamrocks which 
he wore, lor the time, probably, he was moved ; he could 
not but be moved by their demonstration of loyalty. How 
were this trusting people to know that the shamrocks would 
be flung aside in a few brief hours for a carouse with the 
mistress who accompanied him, and with whom he scan- 
dalously kept company at the Viceregal Lodge. 

Sackville Street is, as we have said, the finest street in 




the world. Its length, three-eighths of a mile, and its 
breadth of 120 feet, is only broken by Nelson's pillar, 
which faces the Post-Office, a noble building. Its houses 
are fairly regular, and of considerable height. Now the 
multitudes who thronged the streets left, only space for 
the passage of the royal equipage, in which the King con- 
tinued standing as it passed along, bowing, with a grace 
peculiarly his own, and pointing histrionically to his heart 
and to his shamrock. Every ' ; coin of vantage " was lite- 
rally occupied. Even the very capital which supported the 
statue of Nelson on its pillar, which shoots up 134 feet 
into the air, had its occupants. The frontage of the Post- 
Office was crowded, and gaily-dressed ladies thought them- 
selves happy to find a place on the architrave above. The 
procession passed over Carlisle Bridge, and then wended 
its way through the College Green and Dame Street to the 
Castle. 

Even the higher classes were affected by the general 
outburst of loyalty, and very large sums of money were 
subscribed (on paper) to build a royal residence. It was 
agreed that a million of money should be raised through 
the country for the same purpose from the unhappy peasan- 
try. Fortunately for them, the scheme fell through when 
the King left Ireland, and when it was found that the 
noblemen who had been so liberal of their promises were 
by no means willing to carry them into execution. 

O'Connell promised to contribute twenty guineas a year 



■x4 
■<-'v 

w 







A PEOPLE EASILY DECEIVED. 



to the fund, but his subscription was never required. On 
the King's departure he presented him with a laurel crown. 
It was reported in the English papers that the King had 
given O'Conuell his cap in return, a statement which 
O'Connell indignantly denied. 

The King sailed away from the Irish shores, leaving after 
him a loyal and contented, because impressionable nation. 
There is not on the earth a people so easily deceived as the 
Irish, because their natural bonkommie leads them to trust, 
and their natural buoyancy of character leads them to 
hope. 

How their trust was betrayed, and their hopes shattered, 
are too well known to need record here. The King left 
the country a lecture on unity, and a compliment on their 
loyalty, in the shape of a letter from Lord Sidmouth to 
the Lord-Lieutenant ; and so the royal visit ended. He 
embarked at Dunleary, a village then, a town now, and 
so called from Laoghaire, a famous Irish monarch. It has 
since been called Kingstown. 

But though the King was obliged to receive the laurel 
crown from O'Connell, his hatred of the bold advocate of 
Irish rights was unabated. After the Emancipation Act 
had passed, O'Connell presented himself at a levee in 
London. He approached the royal presence with the usual 
ceremonies, but as he saw " the royal lips moving," he 
advanced, believing that he was addressed. Whatever the 
King had said was inaudible, so O'Connell kissed hands 






m 



jf* 




and passed on. In a few days some curious reports ap- 
peared in the papers. It was said the King had used some 
strong language, which was not unusual ; it was said also 
that he had cursed some one at the levee, which was un- 
usual; and more, that the individual favoured by the royal 
anathema was Irish. O'Connell met the Duke of Norfolk 
soon after, and asked if he could explain the newspaper 
reports. " Yes, ' he replied, " you are the person alluded 
to. The day you were at the levee, his Majesty said, as 
you were approaching, ' There is O'Connell. G — d — the 
scoundrel ! ' ." 8 

When speaking of George IV.'s visit to Ireland, O'Con- 
nell's opinion of the royal visitor was by no means compli- 
mentary. He described him then " as beiug a most 
hideous object ;" though in 1794 "he was a remarkably 
handsome, fine man," and " a very fine-looking fellow." 
O'Couuell's opinion of his appearance in 1820 may have 
been influenced by the fact that he was humbugged by 
royalty, although he stoutly declared the contrary. If 
O'Connell softened a little in the presence of royalty, it 
was because he was Irish, and had imbibed the trusting 
nature of the Celt with his mother's milk. It was not to 
his discredit that he should have believed " the greatest 
liar in England " for a time, when more experienced men 
were equally deceived. 4 



3 " Personal Recollections of O'Connell." By O'Neil Daunt. 

* O'Connell used often to relate the well-known, anecdote of Fox and 




476 "THE GREATEST LIAR IN ENGLAND:' 

There is no doubt that the King was carried away either 
by the enthusiasm of the people or by bis copious libations 
of whisky during his Irisb visit. 6 He found himself in an 
uncomfortable position on bis return from Germany, 
whither he had proceeded after his visit to Ireland; but 
the discomfort was of short continuance, Irish opinion was 
of too little consequence to disturb the royal mind. 

Yet there were noble-hearted men in England even then 
who pitied Irish degradation, and, not altogether under- 
standing the Irish character, blamed the effervescent 
loyalty of the people. One of the most powerful and sting- 
ing political ballads of that or any other age was written on 
this subject by Lord Byron. He had defended " hereditary 

Mrs Fitzherbert. " I believe," he used to say, " that there never was a 
greater scoundrel than George the Fourth. To his other evil qualities 
lie added a perfect disregard of truth. During his connection with Mrs 
Fitzherbert, Charles James Fox dined with him one day in that lady's 
company. After dinner Mrs Fitzherbert said, ' By the by, Mr Fox, I 
had almost forgotten to ask you, what you did say about me in the 
House of Commons the other night ? The newspapers misrepresent so 
very strangely, that one cannot depend on them. You were made- to 
say, that the Prince authorised you to deny his marriage with me ! ' — 
The Prince made monitory grimaces at Fox, and immediately said, 
' Upon my honour, my dear, I never authorised him to deny it.' — ' Upon 
my honour, sir, you did,' said Fox, rising from the table ; ' I had 
always thought your father the greatest liar in England, but now I see 
that you are.' " 

5 " The Duchess of Gloucester went to see him [the King] yesterday. 
. . . He is not so much enraptured with Ireland as she expected to see 
him. I believe he is a little alarmed at the advances and favour he has 
Ehown to the Catholics." — Mr W. H. Freemantle to the Marquis of 
Buckingham — Memoirs of the Court of George IV., vol. i. p. 201. 




bondsmen " not only in the heroic metre but in the grander 
epic of action. In his Avatar the keenest irony of all 
was, perhaps, that contained in the opening verse : — 

" Ere the daughter of Brunswick is cold in her grave, 
And her ashes still float to their home o'er the tide, 
Lo ! George the Triumphant speeds over the wave 

To the long-cherished isle which he loved — like his bride." 

Even O'Connell did not escape his scathing denunciation, 
while he certainly did not spare those of his own rank. 
He taunts O'Connell with proclaiming the accomplish- 
ments of the monarch, and asks Lord Fingal, in allusion to 
his being made a Knight of St Patrick — 

"Will thy yard of blue ribbon, poor Fingal, recall 

The fetters from millions of Catholic limbs! 
Or has it not bound thee the fastest of all 

The slaves who now hail their betrayer with hymns ? " 

As grave fears were now felt in England of a coalition 
between the English Radicals and the Irish Catholics, the 
Marquis of Wellesley was sent to Ireland as Viceroy to 
raise the hopes of the latter party. But there was just 
this difference between the policy adopted towards the vast 
majority of the Irish nation and the few Orangemen who 
sought to govern it: from time to time, it was whispered 
to the nation that some measure of justice was to be dealt 
out to it, but when the time came for doing the justice, 
it was generally found inexpedient. With the Orange 



,'■ ■■• 

M 



M 



i ■■■■■'■ 
('■■' 



§ 

f/'i 




party, there was less talk, and a great many grants of 
even unproinised favours. 8 

The Marquis of Wellesley, in pursuance of an occasional 
policy, professed to come as the friend of the Catholics; hut, 
in pursuance of the usual policy, acted as the patron of the 
Orangemen. He got scant thanks for his pains, even from 
them. His marriage with a Catholic lady did not improve 
his position in their eyes, and the " Exports of Ireland," 
at public dinners, became a favourite toast, the proposers 
having scarcely the decency to wait until his Excellency had 
left the banquet-table. 7 

At the drunken orgies usually held at the decoration 









6 On the 10th March 1822, Mr Freemantle wrote thus to the Duke of 
Buckingham from the Board of Control : " With regard to Ireland, I 
am quite satisfied the great man is holding the most conciliatory language 
to all parties ; holding out success to the Catholics, and a determination 
to resist them to the Protestants." — Memoirs of the Court of George IV., 
vol. i. p. 295. 

It was no wonder O'Connell worked hard for repeal of the Union. 

The Duke of Montrose, in writing to Lord Eldon during the King's 
visit to Dublin, spoke of Ireland and its inhabitants in a fashion which 
showed the utter ignorance of English statesmen on such subjects. He 
was "surprised with the city and its superior inhabitants," no doubt 
having always believed the traditional Irish barbarian theory ; but he 
was shrewd enough to see, and honest enough to express an opinion on, 
the misfortunes of the country also. " It certainly wants capital and 
the residence of its nobility and gentry ; the latter will secure the in- 
crease of the former, and must, in my opinion, precede the former. The 
land appears to be let too high, and to be very little manured." — Life of 
Lord Chancellor Eldon, vol. ii. p. 433. 

' The Marquis married Mrs Patterson, an American lady, remarkable 
for her beauty, which was enhanced by her fortune of £\ 00,000. This 



m 



AN USHEARD-OF OUTRAGE. 



of King William's statue, the 12th Lancers shouted " To 
hell with the Pope," a miserable party cry not yet extinct, 
and they supplemented their ignorant blasphemy with 
a curse on O'Connell, "the Pope in the pillory in hell, 
and the devil pelting O'Connell at him." Probably there 
were not ten men in the whole rabble rout who had the very 
least idea what the Pope believed or taught. 

The Beefsteak Club held its revels safe under the shadow 
of respectability. It was originally a musical society, but 
had long ceased to promote harmony of any kind. At one 
of the carousals the obnoxious toast was quaffed. Three 
officers of the Castle were present, and all Dublin was 
electrified at hearing next morning that they were dis- 
missed. The rage of the Orange party was unbounded. 
They had not been accustomed to interference in their 
exhibitions of disloyalty. They determined to have their 
revenge, and they had it. The Marquis was alarmed at his 
own boldness. To interfere with the Orange, or Protestant 
ascendency party, was an unheard-of " outrage " on the part 
of the Government, He had to compromise matters by 
going to dine with the club uninvited. Lord Manners, the 
Chancellor, presided. All was conducted with due decorum, 
until his Excellency rose to take his leave. He walked 
through files of Orangemen to the door, but he had scarcely 



lady was the widow of Jerome Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother. She 
was a descendant of Carroll of Carrolton, one of the Irish signers of the 
American Declaration of Independence. 




reached it ere every glass was filled, and before lie left, the 
toast of the " Exports of Ireland " was given and drunk with 
shouts of triumph. It was a lesson to the Marquis not to 
interfere with Orangemen again. 

English statesmen wrote to each other confidentially for 
the hundredth time, that they were assured " by very intel- 
ligent" friends that " Ireland was in a worse state than 
ever," and that nothing but " vigorous measures " would 
save it. The vigorous measures were entirely limited to one 
side — to the side that could be coerced with impunity; 
consequently, the " worse state than ever" seemed likely to 
be still a normal condition of Irish affairs. 8 What could 
be done with those who would not be put down, who would 
rule the Government, and who had the hearty sympathy of 
the whole English nation in all their misdeeds. If the 
Marquis of Wellesley had dared to proceed against these 
men, they would have brought a storm about his ears which 
would have resulted in his recall. As it was, because he made 
some little show of justice to the Catholic party, he was 
grossly insulted in the theatre, and his life threatened on 
the occasion of the famous " Bottle riot," at the close of 
the year 1822. The offenders were brought to the bar — 
their guilt was clearly proved. It was one of the fiercest 
and most unprovoked attacks ever made on Government. 
It was the result of a deep-laid plot against the Lord- 

8 " Letter from the Right Honourable T. Grenville to the Marquis of 
Buckingham — Memoirs of George IV.," vol. ii. p. 215. 



tie ^ 

ft;! 



A GREAT CATHOLIC TRIUMPH. 



481 



1 



Lieutenant. He narrowly escaped with his life ; but the 
offenders were Orangemen, and they escaped, because no 
jury could be found to bring them in guilty. 

At the commencement of that year, a corporation dinner 
was given at Morrison's Hotel, at which the glorious 
memory was drunk, and the proposer, Sir Thomas Whelan, 
hoped that the corporation " would never forget that 
great, that brave man, who had made them what they 
were." 

The compliment to the royal memory was a doubtful one. 
If William tyrannised, he tyrannised to win or keep a 
kingdom ; but those men were, each in their way, petty 
tyrants, tyrants who boasted of their pitiful illiberality,and 
gloried in their ignorant bigotry. Even at this very dinner, 
they declared that the kingdom would not be " safe for six 
months," because some little grace was shown to their 
Catholic fellow-subjects. For them, indeed, there was but 
one kingdom, their own little body corporate, and but one 
freedom, liberty to insult those who dared to differ from 
them. 

The Catholics obtained a great triumph, however, at this 
period, by the return of Mr White for the county Dublin. 
He was opposed by Sir Compton Domville, a violent Orange 
partisan. Both parties were lavish in their bribes, but 
O'Connell's eloquence and nerve carried the day for White. 
He went from chapel to chapel along the Dublin coast, and 
spoke to the freeholders in small parties with that persua- 




sive eloquence which rarely failed of its effect. The priests 
were, as they have always been, most earnest in support- 
ing the unhappy victims of landlord tyranny, and Sir 
Compton learned for the first time, with equal annoyance 
and indignation, that his tenants dared to call their votes 
their own. 





CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION-ITS FORMATION AND DEFENCE. 
1822-1827. 

FLOOD AND CONNOR-CROSS-EXAMINATION OP FLOOD-FLUNKET AND HART - 
FORMATION OP CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION-PRIESTS AND PEOPLE BROUGHT 
INTO ACTrON— FIRST MEETING— THE INEXORABLE PDRCELL— THE PENNY-A- 
MONTH SCHEME FOR LIBERATING IRELAND-GRAND AGGREGATE MEETING— 
THE CONVERSION MANIA-THE POPE AND MAGUIBE CONTROVERSY-ABORTIVE 
PROSECUTION OF O'CONNELL-THE DUKE OF YORK'S " SO-HELP-ME-GOD " 
SPEECH-THE KING'S SPEECH AND THE ASSOCIATION-LORDS LIVERPOOL AND 
BROUGHAM-O'CON.VELL IN LONDON-LOIIDS PALMERSTON AND ELDON-THE 

LADIES-O'CONNELL'S POPULARITY -AIMS OF THE ASSOCIATION-ASOTUER 

CHALLENGE — SHLEL — OANNINO. 




'AN ACTOR SPOILED. 



than suspected of complicity and connivance. The man's 
name was Flood. He commenced life as a lamplighter in 
the Crow Street Theatre in Duhlin. He was a notability 
there, and used to keep the green-room in roars with his 
recitations, obtaining more money in this way than many 
legitimate wearers of the buskin. To his other accom- 
plishments he added that of being a most expert swimmer, 
and he was given a fine appointment in the revenue as a 
reward for saving the life of some nobleman's son. 

He was active and energetic, and we now find him as 
John Flood, Esq., settled in Dingle. 

But the man was an actor spoiled. Dingle, to use a 
local expression, was "at the back of God-speed;" and 
instead of getting up a cutter, he got up a theatre. Flood 
became at once the most popular man in Dingle. Every 
house was open to him, and every party. Plays led to sup- 
per-parties, and Flood, who was supposed to hunt piracy by 
sea, turned pirate on land, if tradition does not belie him ; 
and was more than once had up before the "justices" for 
raids on neighbouring farms, to obtain geese and turkeys for 
his convivial meetings. Ugly reports went up to Dublin, 
and Flood felt assured that he must capture something 
more important than fowl, if he wished to retain his situa- 
tion. 

Fortune favoured him. He seized a Dingle shopkeeper 
named Connor, who had long engaged unmolested in illicit 
trade. He seized him at midnight, at the head of forty 



"COME BACK, ALONZO!" 



horses, each bearing three large sacks of tobacco. Infor- 
mation was given, and special counsel sent down to the 
Tralee assizes to prosecute. 

But Connor, who held a very respectable position, had a 
great number of friends in Tralee. They wisely retained 
O'Counell for his counsel. His case certainly could not 
have looked worse. The man was caught in the act, and 
fourteen years was the lightest sentence he could expect. 

Connor's friends employed the shop boys and others 
to watch Flood for the three or four days preceding the 
trial. They made him declaim for them, and act for them, 
and they supplied him abundantly with drink. They kept 
him in a state of semi-intoxication ; and when he came to 
give his evidence at the trial, he was, to use the vernacular, 
more than half-seas over. 

The evidence was simple enough. He had lain in 
ambush for Connor, had seen him approaching with his forty 
horses, had sprung out upon him and seized him, but the 
horses had escaped. 

He was just going down from the witness-box when he 
was recalled by O'Connell for cross-examination. 

" Come back, Alonzo 1 " roared O'Connell. 

O'Connell knew Alonzo well, every one did in Dublin, 
and was well informed of his former career by Connor's 
friends. 

The right chord was touched. Flood turned round to the 
place from whence the rolling tones had proceeded, exclaim- 









THE RIGHT CHORD TOUCHED. 



ing, " Alonzo the brave, and the fair Imogene I " in his 
best theatrical style. 

O'Connell opened fire. There was no fear of his client 
now. 

He began, "And who was your Imogene in Dingle ? " 

Flood shook his head and made imploring gestures. 
It was no use. When O'Connell had a victim in the wit- 
ness-box, he might resign himself; it was useless to 
struggle. Flood was obliged to answer. He was obliged 
to tell how many Imogenes he had in Dingle, how many 
supper - parties he had given, how many parts he had 
played, and then — how many famous hen-roosts he had 
robbed. At last Flood got into a towering passion, and 
abused O'Connell bitterly. So much the better for his 
client. He puzzled, bewildered, cajoled, and enraged 
Flood, until he made him contradict his own sworn evi- 
dence twenty times over. He plied him with quotations 
from Shakespeare in one breath, and then most adroitly 
insinuated a leading question. At last Flood became so 
excited that he made a spring towards O'Connell, exclaim- 
ing, " My love, my life, my Belvidera ! " Unhappy man ! 
amidst the roaring laughter of jury, counsel, and judge, he 
fell between the witness-box and the bench, and was taken 
up half-unconscious, yet muttering threats of deadly ven- 
geance against his tormentor. 

Connor was acquitted by the jury after a quarter of an 
hour's " deliberation." 



:': 






<*■ 



1 



i 



s 



When my informant reminded O'Connell. of the cir- 
cumstance some years later, at Darrynane, he said he had 
completely forgotteu it. The next day, however, he said 
that " Alonzo " and " Belvidere " had been haunting his 
memory since the previous day, that he distinctly remem- 
bered the whole case, and that it was the greatest triumph 
he had ever had in a court of justice, not even excepting 
that which he had gained in the Doneraile conspiracy. 

I am indebted for the following anecdote to a legal 
friend who is a distinguished member of the Irish 
bar 3 :— 

" When Lord Manners retired from the Chancellorship, a great 
part of the public looked to Plunket, the Attorney-General, 
then in the zenith of his fame as an orator and a statesman 
as the successor to the high place. The newspapers announced and 
the people received it as a fact, and the known object of his ambi- 
tion seemed already in the possession of the pre-eminent labourer. 
English policy, however, or it may be the inability to spare such an 
ally from the House of Commons, stopped his promotion for the 
time, and Sir Anthony Hart, of the English bar, sat as Lord Chan- 
cellor of Ireland. A brilliant gathering of the 'Long Robe' re- 
ceived the stranger on his first sitting with the customary obeis- 
ance. The disappointed, if not insulted, Attorney-General was 
there, and Saurin and Goold, and Bushe, and Wallace and Joy ; 
and, amongst the juniors, Blackburn and Shiel ; but, greatest amongst 
the great, 'the observed of all observers,' the future Liberator. 
' How does Plunket look this morning, Dan V cries Shiel in a shrill 
whisper. ' Very sore at Heart,' responded Dan, rolling his large grey 
eye towards the bench ; and the timely hit ran round the gay circle 



f: 




and soon the buzzing and crowded hall, adding to the long roll of 
the great Dan's hard yet pleasant sayings." 




One of the most important undertakings of O'Connell's 
life was the formation of the Catholic Association. He 
had formed the Catholic Committee, which was abolished 
by Government ; he had formed the Board, which was also 
abolished by Government; but as they could not abolish 
O'Connell, he next formed the Catholic Association. The 
circular letter which preceded the first meeting was the 
joint composition of O'Connell and Shiel. The first 
meeting was held at a tavern in Sackville Street, on the 
28th of April 1823. Lord Killeen was voted to the chair, 
and O'Connell made the opening speech; in which he 
observed with great truth and shrewdness that " some per- 
sons should take upon themselves the trouble of manag- 
ing the affairs of the Catholics." Never had Catholics 
a more competent leader than the man who enunciated 
this truth. 

But there was yet more to be done. A plan had to be 
formed which could not be interfered with by Government. 
Such an undertaking was one into which the Liberator could 
enter with a special zest. O'Connell's plan was an open 
club. Members were admitted on payment of one guinea 
per annum without canvass or ballot, on the vied voce 
proposal of a friend. But O'Connell saw now that it was 
time to bring two powerful bodies into action, the priests 
and the people. Hitherto, all Catholic movements had 



% 



PRIESTS AND PEOPLE ORGANISED. 



been led and carried out by the upper classes, and with fit- 
ful and intermitting help from the aristocracy. 

The people who were to become members of this Asso- 
ciation were to pay one shilling a-year. Poor as the Irish 
peasant was, there were few indeed who could not give this 
trifling sum, and fewer still who would refuse it, The 
very fact of contributing to and being a member of such an 
association was an incalculable benefit. He hoped for the 
first time to give the lower class of Irish a sense of power, 
individual responsibility, and of independence. They had 
now a personal interest in every debate of the Association, 
they now felt that something was being done for them, and 
that they need not seek redress in the wild justice of 
revenge. 

The connection of the Catholic clergy with the Associa- 
tion was an arrangement of still greater importance. In 
order to rule the people, it was necessary that they should 
have leaders. The landlords, with whom they were con- 
tinually at feud who hated their religion and too often 
opposed them in temporal affairs, were not to be thought 
of. AVho, then, could be chosen but the priest ? And the 
priest did his work wisely and well. He kept the people 
united, he made them strong, he gave them hope, they 
learned from him, from time to time, how the great work 
was progressing. Each individual knew that his penny 
went safely to the general fund, and contributed its share 
to the common object. True, it was but a drop in the 



H 






ocean, but the ocean is formed of drops ; and the Catholic 
rent, made up of pennies, became a power in Ireland before 
which English statesmen and cabinets learned to trim the 
sails of their barque with cautious fear. 

Shiel, always cautious, doubted if the plan would suc- 
ceed. 1 O'Conuell, always bold, said it would, for he mould 
make it. This was, indeed, the secret of O'Connell's suc- 
cess, as it must ever be the secret of all success. Yet, when 
we look at O'Conuell, in the zenith of his power and his 
popularity, we are too apt to forget the difficulties he encoun- 
tered in arriving at this consummation. It is a common 
saying that " nothing succeeds like success ;" but it should 
be remembered that success takes a good deal of disap- 
pointment as well as a great deal of labour, — a good deal 
of discouragement as well as a great deal of indomitable 
courage. 

On the 13th of May 1823, The Irish Catholic Asssocia- 
tion, as it was now styled, met at Coyne's, a Catholic book- 
seller, who lived at No. 4 Capel Street, and here its future 
meetings were held. A few gentlemen talked and doubted. 
O'Connell talked too, but he worked. The gentlemen were 
for petitioning Parliament, in well-considered and courteous 
language. O'Connell came out with statements of facts as 
to the oppression exercised on Catholics which no one could 
deny. 



m 




: '^l 



if 






At the meeting lie showed how the poor Catholics in 
jail were deprived of the services of a chaplain even in their 
last moments, in consequence of the bigotry of the Dublin 
Grand Jury. They first appointed Dr Murphy because (hey 
knew he could not attend, they next appointed a Spanish 
priest because he neither knew English nor Irish ; they then 
selected a gentleman whose intellect was astray ; and they 
at last chose a parish priest in Limerick, who was " to come 
up by the mail " when a convict was to be executed. 

The following anecdote is an evidence of O'Connell's 
difficulties, and of his energy in overcoming them. It was 
a rule of the Association that, if the members were not 
present at half-past three o'clock, that being the time 
of meeting, an adjournment should take place. Purcell 
O'Gorman, the secretary, notified the time with rigorous 
punctuality. O'Connell was harassed by the irregularity 
of the members. They would all promise to be present, but 
when the time came the promise would be broken or for- 
gotten. On the 4th of July 1824, says Mr O'Connell's son, 
" the spell was broken " : — 

" At twenty-three minutes past three, on that afternoon, there 
were but seven persons present, including Mr O'Connell himself and 
the inexorable Purcell ! the latter, as usual, watch in hand, not in 
the least moved by the anxiety so plainly depicted in Mr O'Connell's 
face. Another minute, and Mr O'Connell could remain in the room 
no longer. He ran towards Coyne's shop, down-stairs, in the faint 
hope of finding somebody. On the stairs the eighth man passed 
him going up. In the shop itself were fortunately two young May 



(ft 9 

i\5< 



m 

m 

W, 






nootli priests making some purchases. The rules of the Association 
admitting all clergymen as honorary members without special 
motion, he eagerly addressed and implored them to come up but for 
one moment, and help to make the required quorum. At first they 
refused, there being a good deal of hesitation generally on the part 
of the clergy to put themselves at all forward in politics, and these 
young men in particular having all the timidity of their secluded 
education about them. But there was no withstanding him ; partly 
by still more earnest solicitations, and partly by actual pushing, he 
got them towards the staircase, and upon it, and finally into the 
meeting-room, exactly a second or two before the half-hour, and so 
stopped Mr O'Gorman's mouth ; and the required number being thus 
made up, the chair was taken." 2 

O'Connell's master-mind had grasped riot only the in- 
tellectual but even the financial arrangements of his new 
plan. He calculated that by his penny-a-month subscrip- 
tions £50,000 per annum would be raised. It was a goodly 
sum, but not more than sufficient for the purpose. He 
proposed the following division of the amount : — - 

For parliamentary expenses .... £5,000 
For the services of the press . ... . 15,000 
For law proceedings, in preserving the legal 
privileges of the Catholics, and prosecuting 
Orange aggressors ..... 15,000 
For the purpose of education for the Catholic poor 5,000 
For educating Catholic priests for the service of 
America 5,000 




.£45,000 
The parliamentary expenses included, or rather involved, 

" Memoir of O'Connell," by his Son, vol. ii. p. 478. 









B 

m 



the residence of an agent in London, who would see to the 
presentation of petitions and other matters of equal 
importance. For the services of the press the sum was 
absolutely necessary, since the press was then hostile to 
Catholics with the rarest exceptions, and it was of vital 
importance that they should have an organ of their own. 
O'Connell had already been asked to assist in the pro- 
viding funds for the education of priests in America, 
where the Irish were already emigrating in numbers, and 
laying the foundation of a mighty empire, where they 
might have ruled and reigned if there had been an 
O'Connell to govern them. 

The principal difficulty was to collect this Catholic rent ; 
but the word difficulty was not in O'Connell's dictionary. 
He said he would collect in his own parish himself: there 
were few gentlemen likely to follow his example, but the 
priests came to the rescue, and, with their assistance, the 
work was done. O'Connell's plan was, of course, scouted 
at first ; and even his sons were taunted at their school 
with their father's " penny-a-month plan for liberating 
Ireland." 

A grand aggregate meeting was held on the 27th of 
July 1824, in Old Townsend Street Chapel, Sir Thomas 
Esmonde in the chair. O'Connell's speech was received 
with even more than usual applause, and with a good deal 
of laughter. He had been sent an enormous package of 
books, pamphlets, and private letters relating to the 



AN OCCASIONAL PHENOMENON. 

Orangemen, of which he made effective and unsparing use. 
He read extracts from these documents, which proved that 
the Society was a secret and deadly engine of tyranny, yet 
the Crown Solicitor for the county Donegal was Grand 
Master of a Lodge. One of the resolutions was this : — 

" Resolved — ' That any Orangeman, who ever lias, or may here- 
after, sign any petition in favour of the Roman Catholics, and for 
their emancipation, be expelled from all Orange Lo Iges, and his name 



From time to time a curious phenomenon occurs in Ire- 
land. Some few individuals, with more zeal than discretion, 
and more bigotry than intellect, make a desperate attempt 
to "convert" the people from the religion to which they 
have adhered with unfailing fidelity for centuries. 3 The 
result is always failure, except in " famine years," when 
the unhappy peasantry are sometimes induced to barter 
their faith for bread. Such attempts are now, happily, 
comparatively rare. Englishmen are too practical where 
money is concerned to expend it without a corresponding 

3 On the 21st October 1826, Lord Palmerston wrote thus to the 
Honourable W. Temple :—" The Catholic and anti-Catholic war is, 
however, carried on more vigorously than ever, and the whole people 
are by their race like a disciplined pack of hounds." He forgot, how- 
ever, that he actually had a share in the hunt himself, for he says in an 
earlier part of the letter he had "a great mind" to send some "zealous" 
evangelical from Cambridge, then full of Simeon's great " revival," to 
work on his estates in Ireland. It does not seem to have ever occurred 
to this intelligent statesman that he was anxious himself to do the very 
thing which he blamed others for doing, and that he was accusing the 
Irish of a quarrel which had actually been forced on them. He did 



return, and have at last discovered that the speculation in 
Irish fidelity to religion is more loss than profit. 

O'Connell, as might be expected, was a fierce opponent 
of all such attempts, and not without cause. The conver- 
sion mania was rampant in the year 1824, and the famous 
Pope and Maguire controversy agitated all Ireland. Each 
party, of course, claimed the victory after the public dis- 
cussion, at which O'Connell assisted; but it was said that 
Mr Pope was more than convinced by Maguire's arguments 
though he continued to oppose them to the last. 

He sank into a state of melancholy, from which neither 
the vivacity of his Welsh wife, nor the benefit of her for- 
tune, could rouse him. He limited his theological efforts 
to giving lectures in private houses. 

O'Connell's speech at the public discussion was long and 
telling. At the conclusion he suggested that the gentle- 
men who were supporting the " Second Reformation," as 
they wore pleased to call this movement, should turn their 

not consider at all what the result would be if he had been an Irish 
Catholic, possessing some English estates tenanted by Protestants, and 
if he had selected some zealous Jesuit from Stoneyhurst College to <'o 
and convert them. In the conclusion of his letter, he blames the 
Orangemen sharply, and spoke of their "orgies" in this town [London- 
derry] and Armagh ; and concluded, "It is strange, in this enlightened 
age and enlightened country, people should be still debating whether 
it is wise to convert four or five millions of men from enemies to friends, 
and whether it is safe to give peace to Ireland."—!,^ of Lord Palmer- 
Bton, vol. i. pp. 178, 179. Yet he was not " enlightened " enough himself 
to see that he was doing the very thing to a certain degree that he con- 
demned in others. 

2i 



w 



it 



attention to the Orangemen in the North, though he was not 
aware that even Lord Palmerston deemed them in need 
of reformation. He made the pertinent ohservation that 
the Catholics were charged with altering Scripture, while, 
in point of fact, it was altered by Protestants ; and he showed 
that the divisions of Protestants themselves on the most 
vital questions of doctrine was an evidence that some 
authoritative source for definition was needed. 

Either O'ConnelPs boldness or the general hatred of the 
Government towards him brought on a prosecution. On 
the 20th of December he made a speech in which he 
said : — 

"He hoped that Ireland would never be driven to the system 
pursued by the Greeks. He trusted in God they would never be so 
driven. He hoped Ireland would be restored to her rights ; but if 
that day should arrive — if she were driven mad by persecution, he 
wished that a new Bolivar might arise— that the spirit of the Greeks 
and of the South Americans might animate the people of Ireland ! " 

For this O'Connell was indicted, but the grand jury 
threw out the bill. The Dublin reporters behaved nobly, 
one and all refusing to give up their notes, or to give infor- 
mation. The reporter of Saunders 1 News Letter was the only 
exception. This gentleman, however, was obliged to admit 
on examination that he was asleep when the seditious words 
were said, and the case broke down for want of proper 
evidence. It was said that Mr Plunket, the Attorney- 
General, was the originator of the prosecution, and that he 
was also the suggester or the active promoter of the 



«^- 



m j > 



M 



" Second Reformation ; " and it was also said that the bill 
was thrown out to " spite " Mr Plunket. 4 

O'Connell's uncle, old " Hunting-Cap," died this year, 
and the Liberator succeeded to his property, which proved 
an important addition to his j>rofessional income. He was 
not, however, free from domestic care. Mrs O'Connell's 
health was failing, and she was taken to the south of 
France. 

When the king's speech was preparing in the opening 
of 1S25, the " Irish difficulty," as usual, proved an obstacle. 
The king was ill, 4 at least he said so ; he was out of 
temper, at least his mistress said so. The cabinet was 
engaged on the Irish portion of the speech daily for hours. 
The anti-Catholics, with the Duke of York at their head, 
were crying out in the " so-help-me-God " style, which 
has been renewed in our own days. 6 The Burlington fac- 



* " There is much idea that the gi and jury threw out the bill to spite 
Plunket." — Wynn to the Duke of Buckingham, Memoirs of George IV., 
vol. ii. p. 193. It certainly was not done to favour O'Connell, and it is 
an edifying specimen of the way "law " was carried out in Ireland. 

5 " The king is still in his bed, sulky and out of humour, and, there- 
fore, venting his spleen when and where he can. It all, however, origi- 
nates in the domestic concerns. Lady is not gone back," &c. — 

Memoirs of the Court of George IV., vol. ii. p. 217. 

6 The Duke of York's famous " so-help-me-God " speech was made on 
the 25th of April 1825, in the House of Lords. The anti-Catholic party 
were so charmed with it, that it was printed in gold letters like the 
famous Durham letter. The whole speech was intended to tell, as 
it did, with a certain class, against even the smallest concession to the 
Catholics. He said in conclusion : — " I ever have, and ever shall, in any 



tion were for masterly inactivity. The Irish Executive 
would not urge the necessity of a bill to put down the 
Catholic Association, much as they desired to do it, hut 
they were quite willing to support one if Government 
would take the odium of it. 7 

There were " innuendoes " and "whispers," and "looks; " 
and the Opposition sincerely hoped, and had some ground 
for suspecting, that it would all end in a " dislocation." 
The Irish Attorney- General Plunket was got over to 
assist in the deliberation, and at last the speech was 
written. 8 Lord Eldon said, indeed, that he " did not ad- 
mire the composition, or the matter of the speech," 9 though 
he had to read it (and submit to it). 

The king's speech first asserted that Ireland was pros- 
perous, and then opened out on the Catholic Association : — 

" It is to be regretted that Associations should exist in Ireland 
■which have adopted proceedings irreconcilable with the spirit of the 
constitution, and calculated, by exciting alarm and by exasperating 
animosity, to endanger the peace of society and to retard the course 
of national improvement. His Majesty relies upon your wisdom to 
consider without delay the means of applying a remedy to this evil." 



situation in which I may be placed, oppose these claims of the Roman 
Catholics. So-help-me-God." The Duke was certainly sincere. 

7 " How they will arrange the speecli with regard to Ireland is the real 
difficulty ; the Cabinet, depend upon it, is engaged in this question daily 
for hours . . . Your benches are loud for doing nothing." — Letter from 
the lion. W. Fremantle to the Duke of Buckingham, Memoirs of George 
IV., vol. ii. p. 202. 

8 " Memoirs of George IV.," vol. ii. p. 204. 

9 " Twiss's Life of Lord Eldon," voL ii p. 534 



rfn 



i 



The result was a bill for the suppression of the Catholic 
Association, which was brought in by Mr Goulbourn on the 
10th of February 1825. The Catholics petitioned against 
the bill ; they explained the working of the Association ; but 
what was the use of explanation to those who were deter- 
mined not to believe them. There were men both in and 
out of Parliament who knew the whole thing was a " Popish 
plot," the constitution to be subverted by it, the Protestants 
to be massacred. 1 Reasoning with men of this class was 
simply useless, because they were incapable of reasoning. 
If they asserted anything, that was in itself a sufficient 
proof of its truth. So, having asserted a falsehood, they 
reasoned on the falsehood, and might as well be left to the 
enjoyment of their own delusion. When they condescended 
to give any reason except their own assertion, it was gener- 
ally original, and of about as much value as the assertion. 
They had " heard" that one or two Italian Jesuits 2 had been 

1 Mr Wynn wrote to the Duke of Buckingham :— " Mr Lewis de- 
scribes the local alarm as very great ; numbers of persons having sat 
up on Christmas Eve in Dublin in expectation of waking dead corpses if 
they allowed themselves to go to sleep. This I heard also from Peel, 
who describes the alarmists as doing incalculable mischief by talking 
before Catholic servants of the massacre," &c— Memoirs of the Court of 
George IV., vol. ii. p. 193. This was an old trick of the Protestant ascen- 
dancy party. They chose to suppose or invent a massacre in perspec- 
tive ; thus they excited the unhappy people by denouncing them to 
Government, by arrests on suspicion, and by using the most violent 
language before them, and at last they exasperated them into some 
outrage which seemed to give a colour of truth to the prediction. 

3 " I am confident, as I have long since been, that the priests have laid 



M 






'"A 



m 



Ji'7 



seen in Dublin, therefore, of course, there was a Jesuit plot ; 
and the priests had preached on the last judgment, as they 
had always done in Advent for centuries before Orangemen 
or Protestants were heard of, and, of course, they meant, not 
what they said, but that a judgment in the form of a mas- 
sacre was to come on the Protestants. 

It is scarcely credible that rational beings could be so 
credulous, and it would be incredible if they had not left 
their own credulity and folly on record. 

These were the class of men with whom O'Connell had to 
deal. In England, men like the Duke of York, who called 
God to witness that they would persevere in bigotry to the 
death; in Ireland, men like Mr Hans Hamilton, who 
imagined they knew everything about a religion which they 
despised, and whose only idea of making converts was by 
physical force. 3 

a deep plot, and are daily preparing the minds of the people for the 
execution of it, which is no Jess than the extermination of the Protest- 
ants, and they have said as much." — Letter from Mr Hans Hamilton to 
Lord Colchester, Diary of Lord Colchester, vol. iii. p. 450. Poor Mr 
Hamilton suffered from Jesnitaphobia. The unhappy man believed that 
every parish priest was a Jesuit, but he does not tell us how he came 
to be so intimately acquainted with the councils of the Society. His 
own letters are a sufficient evidence of his folly. If the priests had laid 
a plot to massacre the Protestants, it is not likely they would " have 
said as much " to him at any time. Persons affected with Jesuitaphobia 
are generally terribly inaccurate in their statements. They represent 
the Jesuits at one time as the most wise and crafty of mortals, and at 
others as fearful fools. 

3 At the close of the year 1824, Mr Hamilton wrote again : — " Your 



''■;:■■ 
1 



h 






; 

L 



Lord (then Mr) Brougham undertook the defence of the 
Association in the House of Commons. The bill for its sup- 
pression was brought in on the night of the 18th February 
1825. The House was crowded to excess. O'Connell and 
his companions, noble specimens of the Irish race, sat below 
the bar of the House. They had hoped they might be called 
on to plead, and O'Connell had prepared a speech for the 
purpose, wliich he delivered afterwards at a public meeting. 

Lord Liverpool opened the charge as Prime Minister. 
He accused the Association of " evading and nullifying the 
law of the land," by levying an unauthorised tax upou the 
Catholic population of Ireland. He said, "If Catholic 
claims were to be granted, they ought to be granted on their 
own merits, and not to the demand of such associations, 
acting in such a manner." 4 

It was the old story. Catholics had put forward their 
claims very often quietly; they were not listened to. Now 
they united to demand them, they were not to be granted, 
because they did not act submissively, as usual, and own 
they were wrong. They should not have acted at all ; 
the matter and the manner were sure to offend. Some 
few Irish peers spoke out nobly for fair play. Lord 



Lordship has no doubt heard of the arrival of some Italian priests in 
Dublin a short time ago." In the same letter, he says, in one place, that 
he had discovered and disclosed all the plans of the Jesuits, and in an- 
other, that the Jesuits acted in such a way as to " evade discovery." — 
Diary of Lord Colchester, vol. iii. p. 356. 

* " Life and Administration of Lord Liverpool," vol. iii p. 320. 




504 PREJUDICES REMOVED OX BOTH SIDES. 

Brougham said the Association was not seditious, and that 
" the Catholic clergy had been most active, and more than 
usually successful, in discouraging sedition and tumult." 
Lord Clifden said that he was himself a subscriber to the 
Association. 

A month later, when Lord Liverpool moved the second 
reading of the bill, he poured forth a torrent of platitudes 
as to what had been already done for Ireland. According 
to his view of the case, the Irish had been overwhelmed 
with benefits, and were the most ungrateful people in 
existence. 

O'Conuell's visit to London brought him in contact with 
many of the Catholic nobility, and helped to remove some 
prejudices on both sides. The English Catholics found 
that O'Connell did not belong to the class of individuals 
who were then agitating in England ; and the Irish depu- 
tation received so much unexpected courtesy, that they 
could not fail to take kindly recollections back with them 
to Ireland. Even the Edinburgh Review paid a tribute to the 
deputation, probably because that periodical was under 
the influence of Brougham. It admitted that " no men 
in circumstances so delicate had ever behaved with greater 
temper and moderation ; " and more than hinted that they 
had been deceived as to the subject of Catholic Emanci- 
pation. 

O'Connell was examined before the Committee on the 9th 
of March, and again on the 1 1th. Lord Colchester has left 



0' CON NELL UNDER EXAMINATION. 505 



an interesting note on this subject in his diary, though his 
description of O'Connell is not very complimentary. 4 

He was an object of universal attraction, and made favour- 
able impressions on some of the leading politicians of the 
day. 

Shortly before leaving London, he attended a public 
meeting at which the Duke of Norfolk presided, where 
he spoke out in very plain language. Lord Colchester 
describes his speech as " long and furious," and complains 
he called Lord Liverpool a " driveller." Lord Palmerston 
had called him a " spoony," which was equally offensive ; 
but as the opinion was given in private correspondence, 
it only proves that noble English lords could use such ex- 
pressions as well as Irish agitators. 6 Indeed, there was a 
good deal of low language used in confidential communica- 
tions at that period. Party feeling ran high, and some 
ladies even went so far as to keep their husbands at home 



5 Extract from Diary.—" 9th Irish Committee.— O'Connell examined 
for four hours ; confined himself to the state of the administration of 
justice, how far satisfactory or unsatisfactory, from the highest to the 
lowest jurisdiction, police included. O'Connell appears to be .about 
fifty-three or fifty-four years of age, a stout-built man, with a black wig, 
and thin light-coloured eyebrows, about the middle stature, pale coun- 
tenance and grave features, blue eyes, reflecting expression of counten- 
ance [sic], his whole deportment affected respectful and gentle, except 
in a few answers, when he displayed a fierceness of tone and' aspect. 
He went to the Munster Circuit twenty-three or twenty-four years, but 
now only on special occasions."— Diary of Lord Colchester, vol. iii. p/372. 
6 "I can forgive old women like the Chancellor [Lord Eldon], spoonies 
like Liverpool, ignoramuses like Westmoreland, stumped-up old Tories 






w 




by force to prevent them from voting on the Catholic ques- 
tion. As a reward for their enterprise they were toasted 
daily as " The ladies who locked up their husbands." 7 

Lord Eldon's opinion of O'Connell at this period is also 
on record, as well as Lord Sidmouth's. The observations 
of these men are of special interest. Lord Eldon says : — 

"On May 21, 1825, Mr O'Connell pleaded as a barrister before 
me in the House of Lords on Thursday. His demeanour was very 
proper, but he did not strike me as shining so much in argument 
as might be expected from a man who has made so much noise in 
his harangues in a seditious Association." 

Lord Eldon evidently expected the "agitator" would not 
conduct himself with propriety in a law cour,t, and was 
surprised to find him "proper." O'Connell, who hated 
conventional propriety, was out of his element, and there- 
fore he did not shine ; but notwithstanding Lord Eldon's 
prejudiced opinion, there was not a man in England, or out 
of, who could surpass O'Connell in arguing points of law. 



\ll 



m 






B 



like Bathurst ; but how such a man as Peel, liberal, enlightened, and 
fresh-minded, should find himself running in such a pack, is hardly 
intelligible." — Life of Lord Palmerston, vol. i. p. 178. It was precisely 
because Peel was neither liberal nor enlightened when Irish affairs were 
concerned that he did run with the pack. 

7 Possibly it was because Lord Eldon was "an old woman" that he 
especially notes the proceedings of these ladies. He says : — " I forgot 
to tell you yesterday that we have got a new private toast. Lady 
"Warrick and Lady Braybrooke (I think that is her name) would not let 
their husbands go to the House to vote for the Catholics, so we Pro- 
testants drink daily as our private toast, ' The ladies who locked up 
their husbands.' " — Twiss's Life of Lord Eldon, voL ii. p. 554. 









POPULAR EX Til US I A SM. 



In January 1826, Lord Sidmouth wrote thus : — 
" Dr Doyle and Mr O'Connell have a lasting claim upon the 
gratitude of all good Protestants. They have completely dulcified 
my feelings towards them. Emancipation from poverty, and idle- 
ness, and ignorance, and consequently from bigotry, is, I am satis- 
fied, advancing rapidly in Ireland." 8 

O'Connell returned to Ireland on the 1st June 1825, no 
doubt heartily glad to be freed from the restraints of Eng- 
lish society, where he could scarcely move or speak without 
the utmost caution, so closely was he watched on all sides. 
Mrs O'Connell and his daughters met him at Howth, which 
was then the landing-place for English packets, and he was 
escorted to his house in Merrion Square by an immense 
and most enthusiastic multitude. On his arrival he was 
obliged to address the people from the balcony before they 
could be induced to disperse. In sunshine and storm, in 
summer and winter, by day, and even at night, O'Connell 
stood on that balcony from time to time, and, to the no 
small annoyance of his Protestant neighbours, responded 
to the calls of a grateful and faithful people. 

An aggregate meeting was held in a few days, and so 
great were the crowds who flocked to it for admission, that 
Anne Street Chapel, where it was held, was rilled to over- 
flowing five hours before the chair was taken. O'Connell 
was dressed in the uniform of the Association, a blue 
frock with black silk buttons, black velvet collar, and 



a gilt button on the shoulder, white vest, and white 
trousers. 

Mr Coppinger spoke at the meeting, and made a sharp 
hit at the Duke of York, who, he said, should have had 
his " clerk'''' to say amen to his so -help -me- God speech. 
The renowned Jack Lawless was also present, and 
attempted to censure O'Connell for his conduct towards 
the forty-shilling freeholders, whom he had sacrificed for 
the Relief Bill; but he was soon silenced. O'Connell took 
care to avoid the subject. His popularity certainly was 
not lessened by it in Dublin, for at the conclusion of the 
meeting, the horses were taken from his carriage, and he 
was drawn in triumph to his house. Such scenes, now of 
frequent occurrence, must have been extremely offensive 
to the Government, yet they might have learned a lesson 
from them. It only needed a man to show an honest 
interest in the poor and the oppressed to receive in return 
their life-long gratitude. 

A new Catholic Association was now formed, and in the 
formation, O'Connell contrived, with his usual discretion, 
to keep himself within the bounds of law. It was, indeed, 
no easy matter to suppress a man, whose resources seemed 
to be infinite, and who, as soon as he was hunted from one 
form, started up in another. 

The first purpose of the new Catholic Association was to 
promote public and private peace ; the second, to encour- 
age education ; the third, to ascertain the number of the 



A GRATIFICATION OF LITTLE MINDS. 509 



Catholic population ; the fourth, to erect Catholic churches 
and protect the poor; the fifth, to promote science and 
agriculture; the sixth, to encourage literature; the seventh, 
to refute the charges made against Catholics. It was in- 
deed a noble and exhaustive programme, and truly worthy 
of the enlightened mind which originated it. 

It has been one of the misfortunes of Ireland that those 
who have worked for her most faithfully, most earnestly, 
and from the very purest motives, have been always 
thwarted in their plans by some of their own nation. It 
is impossible to account for this strange and sorrowful 
phase in the Irish character, but it is none the less true. 
It may be, it probably is, the remains of that evil spirit 
which was introduced and fostered carefully by English 
statesmen, who, acting on the divide et impera system, left 
no effort unused to disunite Irishmen. Let us hope that 
this national disgrace will pass away in time, and that 
Irishmen will learn the folly and the reproach of divi- 
sion. 

O'Counell's conduct towards the forty-shilling free- 
holders was made the ground for a dastardly attack on 
his character, by men who were neither able nor willing to 
do one tithe of what he had done for Ireland. It was just 
possible for them to snarl, terrier-fashion, at the noble 
lion who defended the sheep from the wolf. It is always 
a gratification to little minds to throw contempt on those 
whose intellect is far beyond their reach ; and they have 









<c\ i 



1 



510 



0.F UXFAILISG GOOD HUMOUR. 



not sufficient intelligence to see that, though they may 
have the gratification of annoying a nobler mind for a time, 
the real disgrace is their own ; and their names have only 
to be known that they may be held up to posterity to meet 
the contempt they merit. 

A "private public" meeting was held to denounce 
O'Connell, and O'Connell, like a man, presented himself at 
it, and defended his own policy as far as it was defensible, 
while he was too much a man not to admit that he might 
have been mistaken. One thing at least was certain : 
through reproach, or contempt, or the powerful opposi- 
tion of men who should have rallied round him, he 
was resolved to stand up for Ireland. He could not 
but know that he had served her as no man had ever 
served her yet. That bonhommie, which was his greatest 
charm, never forsook him, and he concluded his speech 
on this occasion with that happy mixture of earnestness 
and fun which never failed to tell with quick-witted Celtic 
audiences : — 

" I now call upon and conjure gentlemen to bury antmositv and 
captious irascibility, and to join with me in fighting the common 
enemy. I can only say that if the entire country were to turn 
against me, I would not, like Scipio, go to lay my bones in foreign 
earth, but I would go to the aggregate meeting on Wednesday to 
reproach them by exerting myself to serve them, if possible, twenty 
times more. (Laughter and applause.) 1 am happy to be able to 
tell you that I have the report already prepared ; it will probably 
pass in the committee to-day, and will be presented at the aggregate 



m 






VV 



■->■/■, 






meeting on Wednesday — where we shall all meet, I hope, with no 
other object than the success of our common cause — no other view 
than the interests of the people." 

-When O'Connell went on circuit now, he only went 
" special." His dexterity in cross-examination made him 
a forlorn hope, and it is to be feared that his professional 
duty required him to shield the guilty much more fre- 
quently than to defend the innocent. One of these cases 
occurred in the county Cork, where a father, brother, and 
son named Franks were murdered for arms, according to one 
account, and to prevent the marriage of the latter, accord- 
ing to another. A maid-servant had escaped by hiding 
herself under a table, and one of the party turned informer ; 
but O'Connell so bewildered them in cross-examination, 
that they contradicted themselves and each other hope- 
lessly, and the result was an acquittal of the prisoners. 

Wherever O'Connell went, he was received with accla- 
mation, surrounded by an exultant multitude. At Wex- 
ford, when he went special, he was met by a fleet of 
boats, and obliged to take his place in a barge gaily deco- 
rated ; the rowers were dressed in green and gold. After 
a short cruise, he was landed at the bridge, and entertained 
in the evening at a public dinner. 

At the close of the year 1825, O'Connell was challenged 
by Mr Leyne, a Kerry barrister. O'Connell had forsworn 
duelling, and his son Maurice took up the affair. Mr Leyne, 
however, refused to meet him, but John and Maurice 



'•D 




O'Connell prosecuted the affair with vigour. The result 
was, that O'Connell had both his sons arrested and bound 
over to keep the peace. 9 

O'Connell acted with his usual prudence in the forma- 
tion of the new Catholic Association. He passed by the 
" under growl " of Jack Lawless, estimating it just for 
what it was worth ; but he excluded the Honourable Mr 
Bellew, because that gentleman was known to receive a 
large pension from Government, for which no reason could 
be assigned. A committee of deliberation sat for fourteen 
days, and consisted of the following gentlemen : — 
O'Connell, Shiel, Sir Thomas Esmonde, Michael Bellew, 
Hugh O'Connor, the Hon. Mr Preston, the O'Connor Don, 
Lord Gormanston, Lord Kilieen, Sir J. Burke, Captain 
Bryan, N. Mahon, W. Murphy, H. Lambert; S. Coppinger^ 
C. M. Laughlin, M. O'Brien, the Hon. G. Ffrench, J. 
Baggot, and P. Fogarty. The Catholics under the new 
Act could only meet for fourteen days at a time, but 
O'Connell's genius made this a help rather than a hin- 
drance. He made it a reason for encouraging larger assem- 
blies, and for convening assemblies in the different pro- 

8 Through the kindness of friends, we have been obliged by some 
private correspondence on the subject. On the 8th December, Mr Leyne 
wrote, " The matter is now pretty well tranquillised, but I understand 
it is positively rumoured amongst friends that Maurice, under no cir- 
cumstances belonging to this transaction, was either to receive from 
or send a message to any of his sons." The family considered Mi 
O'Connell had been " guilty of a gross insult" 



THE CATHOLIC FIFTY-FOURTH. 

vinces and counties of Ireland at which both Protestants 
and Catholics assisted. 

The first great meeting was held on the 16th of July 
1826. The deliberation continued for fourteen days. In 
the course of proceedings, the Rev. Mr L'Estrauge, O'Con- 
nell's chaplain, stated that when a mutiny broke out in 
Gibraltar, only one regiment out of seven remained faith- 
ful, and that was the Catholic Fifty-fourth. The men 
saved the life of the Governor, and preserved Gibraltar to 
England. During the war, the 47th and 87th regiments, 
which were entirely Catholic, were opposed at one time to 
ten thousand men and defeated them. 1 

The year 1827 was remarkable for political changes. 
Shiel made one of his telling speeches at an aggregate 
meeting, in which he said : — 

" Peel is out — Bathurst is out — Westmoreland is out — Welling- 
ton, the bad Irishman (he was once a page in the Castle, and ac- 
quired the habit of thinking as dependant as a lady lieutenant's 
gown), is out— and, thanks be to God, the hoary champion of every 
abuse — the venerable supporter of corruption in all its forms, the 
pious antagonist of every generous sentiment — Eldon, procrasti- 
nating, canting, griping, whining, weeping, ejaculating, protesting, 
money-getting and money-keeping Eldon, is out. This, after all, is 



1 O'Connell had a quarrel with the Dublin papers about this period, 
for not reporting him fully. The Horning Register very quietly retorted, 
that as O'Connell uttered two hundred words in one minute, and some- 
times spoke three hours at a time, it was scarcely possible. We believe 
O'Connell's feats of language are exceeded by Mr Butt, who is said to 
utter three hundred words in a minute. 



2k 



something. We have got rid of that candid gentleman, who for an 
abridgement of the decalogue would abridge Ireland of her liberties. 
We have got rid of the gaoler who presided over the captivity of 
Napoleon, and was so well qualified to design what Sir Hudson 
Lowe was so eminently calculated to execute. We have got rid of 
that authoritative soldier who has proved himself as thankless to 
his sovereign as he has been ungrateful to his country, and who ha? 
been put to the right-about-left : and better than all — better than 
the presumption of Wellington, the narrow-heartedness of Bathurst, 
the arrogance of Westmoreland, the ostentatious manliness and elabo- 
rate honesty of Mr Peel — we have got rid of Lord Eldon's tears." 

The reins of government were now in the hands of Can- 
ning, a man of singular ability and power. His party 
had held an important position under Lord Liverpool's 
administration, and Lord Palmerston had sided with this 
party, and, as far as he had political power, he had resisted 
the illiberal faction headed by Lord Eldon. 2 Lord Angle- 
sea was sent to Ireland, for the king, who was by no means 
in a qniet frame of mind, said, " he must have a Protestant 
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland." 3 



2 Lord Palmerston said that George IV. " personally hated " him. 
He certainly tried to get rid of him by offering him the government 
of Jamaica. — Life of Lord Palmerston, vol. i. p. 183. 

3 " Diary of Lord Colchester," vol. iii. p. 487. In all the political cor- 
respondence of this period, those who favoured the Catholics were called 
Catholics, and the rest Protestants. It is at first puzzling to read of 
men beiug called Catholics for such a reason. 




T the close of the ?ear 1827,' 
O'Connell made the most en- 
ergetic and active prepara- 
tions for mass meetings of 
the entire people of Ireland, 
and at this period he commenced 
'''& the long and affectionate correspondence with 
the Right Rev. Dr MacHale, which ended 
only with his life. These letters form a most 
important illustration of the latter period of 
O'Connell's career, as we have in his own words 
his own opinions. So might be obliged at times 
to conceal his real motives from the public, but, 
in reading his correspondence with his chosen 
friend and his most valued adviser, we have 
the very secrets of h is heart. 



The first letter of this important correspondence is dated 
at the close of this year : — 

" Merkion Square, 31st December 1827. 

" My Lord,— The public papers will have already informed your 
Lordship of the resolution to hold a meeting for petition in every 
parish in Ireland, on Monday, 1 3th of January. 

" I should not presume to call your Lordship's particular atten- 
tion to this measure, or respectfully to solicit your countenance and 
support in your diocese, if I was not most deeply convinced of its' 
extreme importance and utility. The combination of national 
action, all Catholic Ireland acting as one man, must necessarily 
have a powerful effect on the minds of the Ministry and of the entire 
British nation ; a people who can be thus brought to act together, 
and by one impulse, are too powerful to be neglected, and too for- 
midable to be long opposed. 

" Convinced, deeply, firmly convinced of the importance of this 
measure, I am equally so of the impossibility of succeeding unless 
we obtain the countenance and support of the Catholic prelates 
of Ireland. To you, my Lord, I very respectfully appeal for that 
support. I hope and respectfully trust that in your diocese uo 
parish will be found deficient in activity and zeal 

" I intend to publish in the papers the form of a petition for 
Emancipation, which may be adopted in all places where no indi- 
vidual may be found able and willing to prepare a proper draft. 

" I am sorry to trespass thus on your Lordship's most valuable 
time, but I am so entirely persuaded of the vital utility of the 
measure of simultaneous meeting to petition, that I venture, over 
again, but in the most respectful manner, to urge on your kind and 
considerate attention the propriety of assisting in such manner as 
you may deem best to attain our object. 

" I have the honour to be, with profound respect, my Lord, your 
Lordship's most obedient humble servant, 

" Daniel O'Connell. 

"To the Right Rev. Dr MacHale." 



15 










m 



' :/ : 



O'Connell was well aware of the value of clerical co- 
operation, and no man ever desired it more. His plan 
succeeded to admiration ; simultaneous meetings were held 
in every part of Ireland at the same day and hour; and at 
the same time more, effective arrangements were made for 
Catholic association. Churchwardens were appointed, one 
by the priest and the other by the parishioners, to collect 
the rent, to watch the landlords, to protect the tenants from 
proselytism and from coercion in voting. Such organisa- 
tion was never attempted before in any nationality, and yet 
it was carried out to a degree of perfection worthy of the 
master-mind which originated and worked it out. 

Mr Canning's unexpected death dissolved his Cabinet. 
Lord Goderich came into office, and went out of it, " nobody 
knew how and nobody knew why." On the 22d January 
1828, the Wellington Ministry, was formed. 4 In four 
months the Cabinet was rearranged in consequence of the 
disfranchisement of an English borough. The result was 
indeed momentous for Ireland. Mr Vesey Fitzgerald ob- 
tained a place, and consequently was obliged to vacate his 
seat for the county Clare. The omission of one word in the 
Act of Parliament enabled a Catholic to be elected, though 
it did not permit him to take his seat. We all know the 
result ; but before we enter into details of that event, which 
an English statesman, who even at the moment had 



4 " The king would not. have Sir Robert Peel, to whose ' bowing ' he 
had serious objections."— Diary of Lord Colchester, vol. iii. p. 539. 



fit 



resigned his office, has described as " a new era in the history 
of Ireland" we shall say a few words of the men with 
whom O'Connell worked, or, to put it more correctly, who 
worked with O'Connell. 

And first — because first in Irish affection, and because 
the long and hitherto unknown correspondence which we 
now publish shows that he was first in O'Connell's confi- 
dence — we must name the Rev. Dr MacHale, the present 
Archbishop of Tuam. 

This distinguished prelate was born in 1791 at Tubber- 
navine, a village in the county Mayo. He belongs to an 
old and honourable family, who trace their pedigree back 
for many generations ; but as they preferred heavenly to 
earthly wealth, they sacrificed their temporal possessions for 
conscience' sake.' Even if his Grace were not distinguished 
as a theologian, a poet, and a man of letters, the Irish 
hearts of his people would cling to him fondly because 
of his fidelity. 

His early education was given to him at Castlebar, as 
best it could be when penal laws made knowledge forbidden 

5 The Archbishop of Tuam is directly descended from Bishop 
MacCaile, who received the profession of St Bridget. His family lived 
for centuries in the valley where Amalgaid, then king of that country, 
met St Patrick, and near'the wood of Fochut. — (See Life of Ht Patrick, 
by the Author of the Illustrated History of Ireland, p. 52G.) 

A considerable number of Dr MacHale's relatives on both sides of his 
family have been priests. The Very Rev. U. Burke, of St Jarleth's 
College, is his nephew, and is well-known as a scholar and writer on 
Celtic literature. 



1 



M 







fruit. His vocation to the service of God in the ecclesi- 
astical state manifested itself early, and he entered the 
College of Maynooth, where, after his ordination, he held 
the professorial chair of dogmatic theology for eleven years. 
The importance of this office can only he fully understood 
by Catholics, who know that their Church, and their Church 
alone, has a creed which it is heresy to deny, and which 
must be taught by all its priests, wherever scattered 
throughout the world, with harmony of expression. Being 
divine, it cannot vary, for with the Eternal Truth there is 
no changeableness. But as it must be taught by fallible 
mortals to others equally fallible, it is necessary that there 
should be an infallible authority to define even those deli- 
cate lines of expression which divide truth from error. 
Such is the province of the professor of dogmatic theology. 
He teaches to his students what they must teach to others 
in their turn, he having been taught himself by that 
Church founded by Christ, and taught not only what it 
should do, but what it should believe. The Divine injunc- 
tion was to go forth and teach all nations, not to dispute 
which of two opinions might be the more correct, but to 
teach " whatsoever " they were " commanded?" 6 



i 



6 As many educated Protestants are not only ignorant of Catholic 
doctrine, but in many cases, from education or prejudice, are grievously 
misinformed, it may be well to observe— First, That we see in the 
Epistles how exactly the Apostles carried out the Divine instructions 
on this subject. They taught a certain definite doctrine, and those who 
did not believe or accept that testimony were considered and treated as 



\K3 



While at Maynooth, Dr MacHale was named Coadjutor 
Bishop of his native diocese, Killala, cum jure successions, 
and consecrated witff the title of Mononia in partibus. He 
published a series of letters while at Maynooth on the 
Bible Societies, the Protestant Church in Ireland, and 
Catholic Emancipation, under the signature of Hieropkilus. 
In 1827, he published a work " On the Evidence and 
Doctrine of the Catholic Church," which is so highly 
esteemed that it has been translated into both French and 
German. 

During the Melbourne Administration, the well-known 
series of his letters appeared signed John Archbishop of 
Tuam. Like many distinguished Irish prelates, Dr MacHale 
was selected to preach the Lent at Kome during the spring 
of 1832. His lectures attracted so much attention that 
they were translated into Italian by the Abbate de Lucia, 
who has since been raised to the purple. Nor has Dr 
MacHale forgotten his native tongue. The melodies of 
Moore have been translated into Irish by his facile and 






H 



Mm 






heretics. Obviously if there were no definite rule of faith, there would 
he no harmony, and if variation of (■pinion were allowed on any one point 
of doctrine, the faith would be no longer one. " Sects of perdition " 
are especially condemned in Holy Writ (2 Peter ii. 1). Secondly, The 
Church has power to decide controversies on matters of faith, and 
exercised this power from the very commencement (Acts xv. 7). There 
may be " much disputing " on any subject until the voice of Divine 
authority has spoken. Once it has spoken, there can be none. Obvi- 
ously the Church would be of no use as a teacher, unless she had power 
to define what should, and what should not be believed. 



f 






gifted pen, and part of the Iliad of Homer ; but, true to his 
exalted calliug, he has not forgotten the poetry of Truth, 
and he has commenced the translation *of the Holy Scrip- 
ture into his native tongue. 7 

Dr MacHale's work was done quietly. He was a tower 
of strength to O'Connell. His dignified defence when 
attacked by a petulant judge shows that he is still a 
tower of strength to Ireland. He stands yet, majestic and 
still as the grand old mountains of his native Conne- 
mara, ruling his flock in wisdom and power, and heeding 
but little the angry assaults of those who cannot reach his 
altitude. 

The Right Rev. Dr Doyle, though less a personal friend 
of O'Connell, devoted himself publicly to the cause of Ire- 
land and religion, and by his pen as well as by his bearing 



• 1 



Wm 



1 In the year 1851, Mr Keogh, in his speech at the banquet given to 
him by his constituents in Athlone, spoke thus of Dr MacHale : — " I see 
here the venerable prelates of my Church, first amongst them — ' the 
observed of all observers ' — the illustrious Archbishop of Tuam, who, 
like that lofty tower which rises upon the banks of the yellow Tiber, 
the pride and protection of the city, is at once the glory and the guardian, 
the decus et tutamen, of the Catholic religion." His reversal of this 
compliment in the year 1872 is amusing, and, as a matter of contem- 
porary history, deserves to be placed on record : — " His Lordship then 
dwelt on the meeting in detail, observing with regard to the term 
' Great Prelate of the West,' applied to the Archbishop of Tuam, de- 
nouncing the epithet as fulsome flattery. For his part, he had often 
considered whether he would not rather prefer to be well abused than 
fulsomely flattered, whether it would not be more offensive to have the 
slaver of the tongue or the venom of the teeth." 







when under cross-examination before parliamentary com- 
mittees, did no little service. He was born at New Ross, 
in the county Wexford, in 1786, and was educated at 
Coimbra in Portugal. He was a man of more fervour than 
quickness of thought, and of an ascetic habit of mind. The 
terrible events of the rebellion of 1798 were vividly im- 
pressed in his memory, as he was then for some hours in 
personal danger. He was appointed Bishop of Kildare and 
Leighton at the early age of thirty-two, and his devotion 
to the affairs of his diocese, from the care of the very 
poorest of his people to the supervision of his clergy, was 
beyond all praise. He first appeared as a public writer 
when replying to an offensive charge delivered by the Pro- 
testant Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Magee. His letter elec- 
trified' the Protestant party, and Catholics pointed to it with 
no little pride, as one of many evidences of the ability of 
their prelates. His style was singularly pure, and while 
entirely free from anything like invective, was none the 
less truculent. He has been paid the doubtful compli- 
ment of late years of not being " Ultramontane," 8 yet 
there never was a man more deeply and truly devoted to 
his Church. The following passage, which we extract from 



8 A writer in the Standard of August 17, 1872, describing the pictures 
in the Dublin Exhibition, says :— " Next hangs J. K. L." [this was the 
nom deplume adopted by Dr Doyle], "who was too much of a scholar 
and a statesmen to countenance, had he lived, the Ultramontane tactics 
of the present day in Ireland. Many thousand Roman Catholic Irish- 
men sigh for the days of the Dr Doyle whom this picture vividly recalls." 




his Vindication of Catholics, a letter addressed to the 
Marquis of Wellesley, must have made a deep impression 
on any mind not hopelessly prejudiced : — 

" It was the creed, my Lord, of a Charlemagne and of a St Louis, 
of an Alfred and an Edward, of the monarchs of the feudal times, 
as well as of the emperors of Greece and Rome ; it was believed at 
Venice and at Genoa, in Lucca, and the Helvetic nations in the days 
of their freedom and greatness ; all the barons of the Middle Ages, 
all the free cities of later times, professed the religion we now pro- 
fess. You well know, my Lord, that the charter of British freedom 
and the common law of England have their origin and source in 
Catholic times. Who framed the free constitutions of the Spanish 
Goths ? Who preserved science and literature during the long night 
of the Middle Ages? Who imported literature from Constantinople, 
and opened for her an asylum at Rome, Florence, Padua, Paris, and 
Oxford ? Who polished Europe by art, and refined her by legisla- 
tion ? Who discovered the New World, and opened a passage to 
another? Who were the masters of architecture, of painting, and 
of music? Who invented the compass and the art of printing? 
Who were the poets, the historians, the jurists, the men of deep 
research and profound literature ? Who have exalted human nature, 
and made man appear again little less than the angels ? Were they 
not, almost exclusively, the professors of our creed ? Were they, 
who created and possessed freedom under every shape and form, 
unfit for her enjoyment? Were men, deemed even now the lights 
of the world and the benefactors of the human race, the deluded 
victims of a slavish superstition ? But what is there in our creed 

The writer of this paragraph probably never read the " Life of Dr 
Doyle." If he had done so, he would never have committed himself to 
the absurd assertion that any Irish Catholic " sighs " for the days of 
penal laws, tithes, and Orange ascendancy. O'Connell's portrait in the 
Bame Exhibition is amusingly described with a small sarcasm as " show- 
ing him as he was, big, burly, theatrical, and overbearing." 



k 



626 



DR DOYLE UNDER EXAMINATION. 



:w- 




which renders us unfit for freedom? Is it the doctrine of passive 
obedience ? No ; for the obedience we yield to authority is not 
blind, but reasonable. Our religion does not create despotism ; it 
supports every established constitution which is not opposed to the 
laws of nature, unless it be altered by those who are entitled to 
change it. In Poland, it supported an elective monarch ; in France, 
an hereditary sovereign ; in Spain, an absolute or constitutional 
king, indifferently ; in England, when the houses of York and Lan- 
caster contended, it declared that he who was king de facto, was 
entitled to the obedience of the people. During the reign of the 
Tudors, there was a faithful adherence of the Catholics to their 
prince, under trials the most severe and galling, because the consti- 
tution required it. The same was exhibited by them to the ungrate- 
ful race of Stuarts. But, since the expulsion of James (foolishly 
called an abdication), have they not adopted, with the nation at 
large, the doctrine of the Revolution — ' that the crown is held in 
trust for the benefit of the people ; and that, should the monarch 
violate his compact, the subject is freed from the bond of his allegi- 
ance ? ' Has there been any form of government ever devised by 
man, to which the religion of Catholics has not been accommodated 1 
Is there any obligation, either to a prince or to a constitution, which 
it does not enforce 1 " 

Dr Doyle was examined before a parliamentary com- 
mittee in 1825. His examiners were under the impres- 
sion that they knew far more about the Catholic religion 
than he did, and their principal object was to try and en- 
trap him into some admission 9 which would be hostile to 

8 Dr Doyle was asked the most absurd questions. If any of his exa- 
miners had taken the trouble to procure a Catholic Catechism from the 
poorest Irish girl in London, and had then studied it honestly, they 
would have obtained all the information they desired. The difficulty 
was simply this : These members of Parliament, some of whom cer- 



43 



,2-.' 



f J ^\ 



the religion for which he would have given his life. Such 
ignorance is pitiable, and, unfortunately, even in the pre- 
sent day is not uncommon. To the educated Catholic, pre- 
late or gentleman, it would be simply amusing if it did not 
involve such serious consequences. Dr Doyle was very 
indignant. When a statue of this, prelate was exhibited in 
Dublin, Lord Anglesea went to see it with a large party 
of gentlemen. One of the number observed that he 
had never seen Dr Doyle in that remarkable position. The 
Marquis replied, " I remember it well. When he was 
giving evidence before a committee in the Lords, a peer 
put a question to him about Catholic teaching. He flung 
up his arm just in that empathic manner and exclaimed, 



tainly were honest-hearted and honourable men, had been educated in 
a system naturally and necessarily framed on the belief that Popery 
was founded on lies and corruption, else why would the " glorious Re- 
formation " have been necessary 1 Men who did not believe in the 
"immortal memory" of the usurper William, or who cared very little 
about it, believed this. Their mothers had taught it to them, their 
fathers had acted upon it. Why, then, should it not be true ? Catholics 
indignantly deny their theory. They were too honest themselves to 
disbelieve their Catholic fellow-subjects altogether, yet they were too 
prejudiced to alter their own preconceived imaginary theory. The 
result was hopeless confusion. They tried to get the Catholics to make 
admissions which would fall in with their theory ; but the Catholics 
would not make them, because their theory was false. They asked a 
dozen questions on one subject, and got a dozen clear answers, and yet 
they were not content, simply because they would not give up their 
preconceived theory. Lord Carbery wrote in despair on the subject to 
Lord Colchester. They had examined and re-examined Dr Doyle on the 
subject of Confession, the whole theology of which, dogmatic and moral, 
was disposed of in half-a-dozen questions and answers in the Catechism, 



' I did not think there was a Protestant peer so ignorant 
as to ask that question.' " 

During Dr Doyle's examination, the Duke of Wellington 
left the room for a few moments in order to examine some 
parliamentary document. " Well, Duke," exclaimed a peer, 
who happened to he entering the committee room at the 
time, "are you examining Dr Doyle?" "No," replied 
the Duke drily, "but Doyle is examining us." 

Shiel was O'Connell's most active coadjutor in the 
early part of his career. He was born near Waterford, on 
16th of August 1791, and after spending some years with 
the Jesuits at Stoneyhurst, ended his academic career in 
Trinity College, Dublin, a circumstance which may perhaps 
account for his opposition to O'Connell on the Veto 
question. In 1823 he again joined with O'Connell, as 



W 



which they had not read, and which, if they had, they would not be- 
lieve. Nothing could be done with such men, either in the early or the 
latter part of the 19th century, except to leave them to their ignorance. 
Lord I laibery was sure that " the Confessional was the source of all the 
barbarous and bloody scenes which disgraced Ireland." He had indeed 
learned from Dr Doyle that a Catholic could not receive absolution 
unless he was truly penitent, that being all that God required ; but Lord 
Carbery and other Protestant noblemen required a great deal more 
from the Irish peasant. The priest was to act as spy. informer, police- 
man, and at least moral executioner. He was not to give absolution to 
the penitent unless the penitent gave himself up to human justice. 
Lord Carbery knew very little of the religion of the Bible, or he 
would have remembered the example of Him who said to the peni- 
tent, " Go, and sin no more," and who did not require her or any of those 
•whom He forgave to make public confession of their crimes. 



f) 



already related. Mr North said of him, that he had erred 
in the choice of a profession, and that if he had cultivated 
the drama instead of law, he would have equalled Shake- 
speare. His physique was anything but attractive ; he was 
small of stature, careless as to personal appearance; his 
voice was shrill, but his bursts of eloquence thrilled to 
the very souls of his audience. His complexion was 
dark, and his hair fair and unkempt. Yet this man 
had a soul that poured itself forth in such torrents of 
eloquence as are rarely heard, and a magnetic power which 
kept his hearers spell-bound and entranced. He generally 
entered the Association when the business was nearly 
ended, and while O'Connell was speaking. There was not 
much difference in their age, yet the great master spoke 
of him as " his eloquent young friend, whose power and 
genhis were unequalled by the orators of Greece and Rome 
in the days of their brightest glory." 

He always dressed in black, with white neckcloth, and 
he always wore black kid gloves. When at the close of 
some thrilling and truly terrible outburst, he would draw off 
one glove, and stretch forth his white delicate hand to 
heaven, as if calling down vengeance on the oppressors of 
his race. His finest speech was that already mentioned, 
when he replied to Lord Lyndhurst's unwise onslaught on 
the Irish nation, and asked, " Where was Arthur Duka of 
Wellington when these words were uttered ? Breathlessly 
he should have started up to disclaim them — 

2l 



' The battles, sieges, fortunes, that he passed,' 
ought to have come back upon him." 

In 1825 he would certainly have become subject to a 
Government prosecution only for the death of Lord Liver 
pool. The memoirs of "Wolfe Tone had just been brought 
to Ireland. Shiel possessed himself of a copy, and made it 
the subject of comment in a manner which could not fail 
to excite the anger and the fury of England. He spoke like 
an " enraged prophet : " — 

" Let England," he said, " beware of another Wolfe Tone. Let 
her not rely for safety on her old protectors, the winds ! She may call 
upon them in her hour of peril, but they may not come, or should 
they volunteer their force, it will be subdued by the power of steam. 
A vote of the Catholics of 1793 procured for Tone an introduction 
to the French Directory, and the sympathy of its legions. Let 
England remember that the Catholics of 1825 are more than double 
those of 1793. The hair of Samson has grown again. Should 
oppression drive the Catholics to the field, England will not find the 
Catholic altars of the nineteenth century barriers to their impetuo- 
sity and revenge ! " 

He lost his popularity, great as it was, for a time, by 
accepting a retainer from Lord George Beresford in his 
contest for Waterford ; and he did not improve his position 
in a national point of view by siding with the Government 
he had so often denounced, and accepting a silk gown as 
his reward. 

He came forward again in 1832, when the Repeal 
agitation commenced ; was returned on Repeal principles 
for Tipperary, and was the bitter opponent of Sir Robert 



Peel as long as he remained in the House of Commons. 
He was counsel for Mr John O'Connell at the State 
Trials. He died in 1851, and, like many a more consistent 
Irishman, is buried in a foreign land. 

" Honest Jack Lawless " was a Belfast man, and editor 
of the Irishman, then published in that city. He was a 
powerful, earnest speaker. He was something of an ori- 
ginal character also, and was generally in opposition to 
O'Connell. He went to the bar late in life, and died in 
1840, a few months after receiving the appointment of 
assistant barrister. 

Henry Grattan, the second son of the Grattan, was the 
first member of Parliament who joined the Repeal move- 
ment after the O'Connells. He did not take a prominent 
part in public affairs until that period when O'Connell was 
imprisoned, when he dared the Government in the most 
fearless language; but for some unknown reason he was 
not indicted. 

Mr 0' Gorman Mahon was a prominent and most active 
member of the Association. He was a clear and effective 
speaker, and his personal appearance was very much in his 
favour. He was one of those who joined in putting down 
the disastrous attempts made by English members of Par- 
liament to prevent the Irish Roman Catholic members from 
speaking in the House. O'Connell styled these attacks 
" beastly bellowing," and " ruffianly interruption." The 
language was strong, but hon. members did "bellow," 




i 



and some of the sounds they emitted very closely resembled 
the inarticulate cries of the lower creation. The word 
" ruffianly " was unparliamentary, but so was the conduct 
of those gentlemen, although the Irish members only were 
made the subjects of such interruptions, 1 the object of which 
was to silence them. O'Gorman Mahon, O'Connell's two 
sons, John and Maurice, Mr O'Dwyer, and a few others, 
wished to put down these uugentlemanly interruptions in 
the only way in which they could be put down. In the 
midst of cries of " Chair " and " Order," the party walked 
across the floor of the House of Commons, and politely 
presented their cards to the Tory gentlemen who led the 
attack. A scene followed of another and stormier kind, 
but this interruption was not put down until O'Gorman 
challenged Sir James Graham, and Morgan O'Connell 
fought Lord Alvanley. 

Steele was another of O'Connell's enthusiastic followers. 
He was a man of great energy and poetic temperament, 
which led him to prefer "forlorn hopes" to more ordinary 
battlefields. He set off in early life on a somewhat 



•V' 



: <! 



1 The English House of Commons has not always been remarkable 
for gravity and gentlemanly demeanour in debate, and even in the 
Lords, propriety is not always observed. On the 22d April 1831, there 
was " a state of confusion almost unexampled since the dispersion of the 
Long Parliament by Oliver Cromwell." The noise was so great no one 
could hear what was said. The Duke of Richmond was at last obliged 
to move that the standing order against the use of " offensive language," 
should be read. — Hansard, iii 1806. 



A7i 



m 



MR BARRETT. 



533 



Quixotic expedition to assist the overthrow of monarchy in 
Spain, and proved his earnestness by mortgaging his pro- 
perty for ten thousand pounds to purchase military stores. 
On his return he joined O'Connell, and became Head 
Pacificator. 

Mr Barrett was another very effective ally of the Bepeal 
party. As a journalist he did much and effective service. 
He was frequently prosecuted by Government, and was 
imprisoned three times. In 1827 he established the Pilot, 
which became O'Connell's principal organ. This paper was 
printed in the office of the Morning and Weekly Register, 
and when it was suppressed by Government, Barrett easily 
continued it, evading the law by changing the title, which 
he now made to run thus : — " The Morning Register — the 
Pilot having been suppressed." Evidently it was not easy 
to suppress Mr Barrett. The Pilot was an evening paper, 
and was kept' up as such with its new title, and, of course, 
increased largely in circulation. 

In 1833 he was prosecuted for publishing a letter of 
O'Connell's which first appeared in the London Morning 
Chronicle, and which presumably became treasonable by its 
transmission back across the Channel. Shiel was engaged 
for the defence, but on the very evening of the trial he 
became either ill, or unwilling to act, and returned his 
brief. O'Connell was, therefore, obliged to lead himself. 
Barrett was found guilty, as he expected, and sentenced to 
six months' imprisonment. He might have saved himself 



by giving up O'Connell's name as the author, but he was 
far too true a patriot. 

Mr Ray, better known to O'Connellites as " My dear Ray," 
belongs to later times, with other men who served the great 
Liberator for a time, but with less heartiness than his 
earlier followers. 





England's answer to Ireland's cry for justice — decline since the days 
of henry till. — ireland a necessity for england — a catholic triumph 

address to the catholics of clare — excitement and agitation — 

consternation in england — monster meeting at ennis — scene at the 
hustings, the sheriff and o'gorman mahon — the voting day — mr 
vandaleur and his tenants — return of o'connell — speech of shiel 

— the chairing — excitement in england — the bishops and priests 

official irritation— king dan— the leicester declaration — letter 
of wellington — the emancipation bill passed — o'connell's right to 
a seat disputed — at the bar of the house — re-election — sjjith 
o'brien — en tu u siasil 



1 





^TT7=5'HE Clare election is a stand-point in 

JmMJ ^k) Irish llist01 T- For centuries no Irish- 
'^'^jt/ j^ 1 ^ man was a ^ owe( ^ a voice, or even (lie 

humblest utterance of Lis opinion, 
in the government of his native land. 
The English Government boasted of its free- 
wmg) dom — wonderful things were said about Magna 
Charta, the " palladium of the people's rights," 
for which, be it noted, the people were indebted to 
the Catholic clergy, as they are still indebted to 
the Catholic clergy in Ireland for protection 
against landlord coercion at elections. But, how- 
ever excellent the constitution of England may 
have been, the Irish were not permitted to enjoy 





When their own Brehon law, sacred to them hy its even- 
handed justice and its centuries of observance, was taken 
from them, they asked again and again to be allowed the 
justice of English law. But no ; for all reply they got the 
sword, the triangle, and the gallows. Their cries for 
justice were silenced occasionally by brute force by men 
like Cole, Coote, Baguel, Cromwell, and Grey, 2 who did the 
devil's work, and enjoyed it thoroughly, because, as yet, 
they had not the devil's sufferings to bear as well. The 
Irish were "dogges" to be shot down, and hunted, and 
got rid of, if possible ; but then it was not always possible, 
and despite hunting, and shooting, and violent banish- 
ment to Connaught and Jamaica, and polite banishment 
to continental countries, the Irish race grew and prospered 
numerically. 

From the time of Henry VIII. , the prestige of the Eng- 
lish nation steadily declined. The decline was slow, but it 
was none the less sure. All the bright and fair chivalry 
which found its embodiment in early ages in Arthur, and 
in niediasval times in the Black Prince, died out — died of 
inanition. There can be no physical or spiritual beauty 



2 A cursory acquaintance with Irish history will supply details of the 
bloody work done by these men. In the "Commons' Proceedings" of 
1644, vol. iii. p. 517, it is recorded that Captain Swanley, having cap- 
tured a vessel at sea, and thrown seventy persons overboard because t/ieu 
were Irish, was summoned to the bar of the House, and had thanks there 
given him for his good service, and a chain of gold." This was by no 
means au exceptional case. — See Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 478. 



M 

--:,■"■- 






lb 



without life. The life died out in England when it denied 
the source of life. The foul filthy immorality of the 
Court of Henry VIII, the first " head " of the Protestant 
Church, was perpetuated in the reign of the Virgin Queen, 
with this difference only, that it was a little disguised. A 
very slight acquaintance with history is sufficient to prove 
what the Courts of the Georges and the Williams were. 
The vices of the Courts descended to the people. What, 
indeed, was there to prevent the descent? And as corrup- 
tion of mind and morals became more and more prevalent 
so did hatred of that race become more and more intense 
which had kept its morality because it kept its faith 
practically. 3 

At the commencement of the present century, it was 
discovered that the services of Irishmen were necessary for 
the very existence of the British Empire. She boasts of 
her victories, and with justice ; but they were won for her 
by Irish soldiers. Irishmen came at last to know their 
own value to England, to see that some price, however 
trifling, could be put upon their services. England was 



8 Protestants who cannot deny the morality and exceptional freedom 
from crime in Ireland, point to continental countries also Catholic, and 
ask why are these countries not equally moral I The amrwer is simple. 
We deny that Catholic countries are less moral, using the word in a 
broad sense, than Protestant countries. Protestant tourists admit this, 
with the exception of a few prejudiced persons. If Ireland is excep- 
tionally moral, it is because the Irish practise their religion, as a people, 
and have always done so, more faithfully than any other nation. 




not in a position to deny the debt, but she paid by instal- 
ments and as scantily as possible. It would have been better 
to have made a virtue of necessity. So it came to pass that, 
in the year 1829, an Irish Catholic freeholder was allowed 
to vote theoretically ; practically, however, the vote was 
of little use; — he dared not disobey his landlord, and, above 
all, he dared not vote for any individual who could really 
be his representative, since no Catholic could sit in the 
Imperial Parliament. • The whole system of parliamentary 
representation was an anomaly, — it is an anomaly even 
yet to a certain extent, and probably will be to the end of 
time, since there will always be a power to which the "free 
and independent elector " must bow — or take the con~ 
sequences. As a general rule, electors do not see why they 
should take the consequences. O'Connell taught them for 
the first time to act as free men. 

In the year 1825, there was an election in Waterford ; 
and then, for the first time, Irishmen knew that it was 
possible for them to be free and independent if they dared. 
The Beresfurds were lords of the soil, and expected their 
serfs to obey them. They had been obeyed until now. A 
Catholic population was compelled to vote for an Orange 
representative ; it was that — or starvation. Mr Stuart 
came forward now to oppose Lord George Beresford, and 
engaged O'Connell as counsel. He chose wisely. At the 
hustings, O'Connell was proposed merely to give him the 
opportunity of speaking, for the idea of the election of a 



v . ■ 




Catholic does not seem to have occurred to any of the 
national party. The indignation of the Orange clique may 
be better imagined than described. They were no longer 
the " recognized leaders " of the people — their power had 
received a blow which it never recovered. 

O'Connell spoke for two hours, and then withdrew the 
claim he had no intention of prosecuting ; but his purpose 
was answered. Lord George withdrew in a few days, when 
he perceived that there was not the least hope of his return, 
and Mr Stuart was elected. 

This success gave an impetus to the cause of freedom. 
The people learned that it was possible for them to exer- 
cise the power which they had hitherto believed to be 
merely ideal. They began to see that it was for them to 
decide whether they would be " free and independent 
electors," or mere voting machines. They saw the cost also ; 
but when did an Irishman ever shrink from personal sacri- 
fice for the good of his country ? 4 

Curiously enough, O'Connell's return for Clare was sug- 



ffl 



Ia : 



4 Shiel used to tell an anecdote of this election, of which he vouched 
for the accuracy. Lord Waterford was dying at the time, but the ruling 
passion was strong in death. He heard that his own huntsman, Manton, 
was going to "vote against him." He sent for the old and faithful 
follow ei ; but though the poor man's heart was sore, both from affection 
for his old master, and the knowledge of the consecjuence of exercising 
his right, he refused to vote "against his country and his religion." The 
dying peer had his revenge. Manton was dismissed, deprived of his 
farm, and driven out on the world a beggar. 




gested by a Tory. This gentleman, Sir David Roose, was 
under considerable personal obligations to O'Connell. He 
met Mr Fitzpatrick, the son of the- well-known Catholic 
bookseller, in Nassau Street, who informed him that Mr 
Fitzgerald would be obliged to seek re-election for Clare, 
and suggested that O'Connell should oppose him. Mr 
Fitzpatrick went instantly to O'Connell, who was by no 
means disposed to enter upon the contest. Mr Vesey Fitz- 
gerald was a Liberal, and had acted very fairly towards the 
Catholics, but he was not a Catholic. No Catholic had 
ever yet stood for Parliament since the time when every 
member of Parliament was a Catholic; it was time that 
something should be done to assert their claims. O'Con- 
nell saw this, and he saw also that such an opportunity 
might not occur again for a considerable period. 

With him to decide was to act. He went at once to 
the office of the Evening Post and wrote his address. 
This paper had now passed into the hands of Mr Con- 
way, with whom O'Connell was not on friendly terms; 
but all discord was at an end when the Liberator entered 
his office, declared his purpose, and exclaimed, " Let us 
be friends!" 

The address was soon written, and that evening all 
Dublin was in a state of wild excitement ; and in a few 
days the flame had extended throughout Ireland, and 
reached to England. 

The address was masterly, and worthy to be the first 



m 






C 






- 



I' 

M 










appeal to Irish electors from one of their own ancient 
faith :— 

" TO THE ELECTORS OF THE COUNTY OF CLARE. 

" Ddblin, June 182S. 
" FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN, — Your county wauts a representative. 
I respectfully solicit your suffrages to raise me to that station. 

" Of my qualifications to fill that station I leave you to judge. The 
habits of public speaking, and many, many years of public business, 
render me, perhaps, equally suited with most men to attend to the 
interests of Ireland in Parliament. 

" You will be told I am not qualified to be elected. The assertion, 
my friends, is untrue. I am qualified to be elected, and to be your 
representative. It is true that, as a Catholic, 1 cannot, and of course 
never will, take the oaths at present prescribed to members of Par- 
liament; but the authority which created these oaths (the Parliament) 
can abrogate them ; and I entertain a confident hope that, if you 
elect me, the most bigoted of our enemies will see the necessity of 
removing from the chosen representative of the people an obstacle 
which would prevent him from doing his duty to his King and to his 
country. 

"The oath at present required by law is, ' that the sacrifice of the 
mass, and the invocation of the blessed Virgin Mary, and other 
saints, as now practised in the Church of Rome, are impious and 
idolatrous.' Of course I will never stain my soul with such an oath. 
I leave that to my honourable opponent, Mr Vesey Fitzgerald. He 
has often taken that horrible oath. He is ready to take it again, 
and asks your votes to enable him so to swear. I would rather be 
torn limb from limb than take it. Electors of the county of Clare ! 
choose between me, who abominate that oath, and Mr Vesey Fitz- 
gerald, who has sworn it full twenty times ! Return me to Parlia- 
ment, and it is probable that such a blasphemous oath will be 
abolished for ever. As your representative, I will try the question 
with the friends in Parliament of Mr Vesey Fitzgerald. They may 



send me to prison. I am ready to go there, to promote the cause of 
the Catholics, and of universal liberty. The discussion which the 
attempt to exclude your representative from the House of Commons 
must excite, will create a sensation all over Europe, and produce 
such a burst of contemptuous indignation against British bigotry in 
every enlightened country in the world, that the voice of all the 
great and good in England, Scotland, and Ireland, being joined to 
the universal shout of the nations of the earth, will overpower 
every opposition, and render it impossible for Peel and Wellington 
any longer to close the doors of the constitution against the Catholics 
of Ireland. J 

" Elector/ of the county of Clare ! Mr Vesey Fitzgerald claims, as 
his only merit, that he is a friend to the Catholics. Why, I am a 
Catholic myself ; and if he be sincerely our friend, let him vote for 
me, and raise before the British Empire the Catholic question in my 
humble person, in the way most propitious to my final success. But 
no, fellow-countrymen, no ; he will make no sacrifice to that cause ; 
he will call himself your friend, and act the part of your worst and 
most unrelenting enemy. 

" I do not like to give the epitome of his political life ; yet, 
when the present occasion so loudly calls for it, I cannot refrain. 
He took office under Perceval, — under that Perceval who obtained 
power by raising the base, bloody, and unchristian cry of ' No 
Popery ' in England. 

" He had the nomination of a member to serve for the borough ' 
of Ennis. He nominated Mr Spencer Perceval, then a decided 
opponent of the Catholics. 

" He voted on the East Retford measure — for a measure that 
would put two virulent enemies of the Catholics into Parliament. 

" In the case of the Protestant Dissenters in England, he voted 
for their exclusion — that is, against the principle of the freedom of 
conscience ; that sacred principle which the Catholics of Ireland have 
ever cultivated and cherished, on which we framed our rights to 
emancipation. 



A 




TO THE ELECTORS OF CLARE. 



545 



" Finally, he voted for the suppression of the Catholic Association 
of Ireland ! 

" And, after this, sacred Heaven 1 he calls himself a friend to the 
Catholics. 

" He is the ally and colleague of the Duke of Wellington and Mr 
Peel. He is their partner in power ; they are, you know, the most 
bitter, persevering, and unmitigated enemies of the Catholics ; and, 
after all this, he, the partner of our bitterest and unrelenting enemies, 
calls himself the friend of the Catholics of Ireland. 

" Having thus traced a few of the demerits of my right honour- 
able opponent, what shall I say for myself? 

" I appeal to my past life for my unremitting and disinterested 
attachment to the religion and liberties of Catholic Ireland. 

" If you return me to Parliament, I pledge myself to vote for 
every measure favourable to Kadical REFORM in the representative 
system, so that the House of Commons may truly, as our Catholic 
ancestors intended it should do, represent all the people. 

" To vote for the repeal of the Vestry Bill, the Subletting Act, 
and the Grand Jury Laws. 

" To vote for the diminution and more equal distribution of the 
overgrown wealth of the Established Church in Ireland, so that the 
surplus may be restored to the ,sustentation of the poor, the aged, 
and the infirm. 

" To vote for every measure of retrenchment and reduction of 
the national expenditure, so as to relieve the people from the bur- 
dens of taxation, and to bring the question of thq REPEAL OF 
THE UNION, at the earliest possible period, before the considera- 
tion of the Legislature. 

" Electors of the county of Clare ! choose between me and Mr 
Vesey Fitzgerald ; choose between him who so long cultivated his 
own interest, and one who seeks only to advance yours ; choose 
between the sworn libeller of the Catholic faith, and one who has 
devoted his early life to your cause, who has consumed his manhood 
in a struggle for your liberties, and who has ever lived, and is ready 

2 M 



w 







to die, for the integrity, the honour, the purity, of the Catholic 
faith, and the promotion of Irish freedom and happiness. Your 
faithful servant, Daniel O'Connell." 

The next movement was to collect funds. In one week 
fourteen thousand pounds were at his command. Cork, 
always liberal for country or religion, helped considerably to 
swell the amount. Canvassers were wanted, too, as O'Con- 
nell could not leave Dublin until the last moment ; and they 
were found also. Mr Shiel, who arrived several days before 
O'Connell, was his counsel. Father Tom, as the Rev. Dr 
Maguire was familiarly termed, went also. Mr Ronayne, 
a Cork man — one of the famous Cork Ronaynes — accom- 
panied him. A host of lesser Repeal luminaries followed ; 
but Father Tom and Mr Rouayne were very towers of 
strength, for they spoke to the people in their own old 
Celtic tongue, and told them why the Liberator was the 
best man for Ireland. 

When all this was known in England, the consternation 
was terrible. The old war-cries were declaimed with double 
vigour. Lord Clancarty wrote in a panic of alarm from the 
Under-Secretary's Lodge in Dublin about " the state of 
the country," — that unhappy country, which is always 
in a " state," unpleasant, from one cause or another, to 
English legislators. He uttered loud complaints of the 
" unalterable hostility " of the Roman Catholics " to us ; " 
but he forgot to add, as he was too prejudiced to see, that 
their hostility was not to individuals, but to a system. 



m 

M 






m 



CONSTERNATION IN ENGLAND. 



They would have been fitrange men these Irish Catholics, 
and very unworthy of their manhood, if they had not been 
hostile to a system which did not permit them a voice in 
their own government. They talked " loudly " about " Par- 
liamentary reform," that was another of their crimes ; yet 
Parliament reformed itself soon after. Every " rational 
man," — an expression which he glossed, every man agreeing 
with Lord Clancarty, — was disgusted with these miserable 
Irish. They would not sit down and hug their chains — 
they would assist themselves — they would declare that they 
should have the rights of men. If they had not been Irish, 
their spirit and independence would have been highly com- 
mendable ; if they had not been Catholics, they would have 
been pronounced mart3 - rs to their desire for political and 
religious liberty, and would have been extolled accordingly. 
But as they were Irish, and also Catholics, as they could not 
alter their nationality, and would not alter their religion, they 
were denounced as traitors. Yet Lord Clancarty declared 
that the English public " were as ignorant on the whole 
subject as if no such island existed ; " and concluded, and 
showed his own ignorance by saying, that the Government 
of the day "had handed over its administration to a Popish 
hierarchy and Popish priests." 6 



: * I 6 " Diary of Lord Colchester," vol. iii. p. 575. Precisely similar ex- 

pressions are used in the present day hy the anti-Catholic party in the 
House of Commons, because the Government does not compel submis- 
sion to the ministrations of a suspended priest. 



» C. *>'." 



Lord Colchester has left it on record, that " every one 
agreed that O'Connell's present proceedings could not be 
tolerated, and that the interference of the priests must he 
put down." He adds, however, " The question is, By what 
means ? " And that was the question. They could not he 
hanged for voting, because they were allowed to vote ; 
they could not be imprisoned for selecting a candidate, 
because the object of a vote was supposed to be to allow a 
man a choice ; they coidd not be transported beyond the 
seas, for they had not committed any indictable offence. 

But there were two or three English statesmen who took 
a broader' view of the affair, like Lord Palmerston, and saw 
that "the event was dramatic and sublime;" 6 and so it 
was. Thirty thousand Irishmen assembled j.n and about 
Ennis on a sultry day in July, and yet not one of them 
touched a mouthful of the ardent spirit which is the special 
temptation of the Celt. There was indeed one drunken man 
seen, but only one ; but he was an Englishman and a Pro- 
testant, and strangely enough, if one contemporary record is 
to be believed, — O'Connell's own coachman, whom he com- 
mitted on his own deposition for a breach of the peace. 7 

Lord Anglesea had seven thousand regulars in reserve, 
but he prudently kept them " all out of sight." He need 
not have troubled himself, for there was not so much as a 



:a 



6 " Life of Lord Palmerston," vol. i. p. 306. 

' So Lord Palmerston says ; but we doubt if O'Connell had an Eng- 
lishman in his service, though he may probably have had a Protestant. 



m 



blackthorn stick to be seen in the whole assembly. Bands 
of music enlivened the scene, green flags and green banners 
waved in all directions; and some enterprising manufac- 
turer had gone so far as to supply the women with hand- 
kerchiefs on which the portrait of O'Connell was printed. 

A scene occurred on the hustings. Mr Vesey Fitzgerald 
and his party stood on one side of the High Sheriff, and, 
unhappily, with him stood the few Catholic aristocracy in 
the county. O'Connell stood on the other side. He had 
only the aristocracy of talent, and a few faithful friends ; 
but the people were around him in their thousands, and the 
priests in their hundreds. 

The High Sheriff was in an uncomfortable position. It 
can scarcely be pleasant to preside over a contested election 
under any circumstances. His sympathies were naturally 
with the aristocracy, and he felt it incumbent on him to 
show his power, and make an example (if he could) of some 
one on the opposite side. He made an unhappy selection. 
Just as the proceedings were about to commence, a gentle- 
man leaped over the gallery, and quietly sat down on the 
side of it with his feet suspended over the people. His 
dress was as remarkable as his appearance. He wore a 
coat and trousers of Irish tabinet; he dispensed with a 
waistcoat, and wore a blue shirt, open at the neck ; but his 
offence was wearing an immense sash scarf-fashion across 
his shoulder, with a medal of the " Order of Liberators " on 
his breast. 



O'GORMAN MAUON. 




Mr Mahony, the High Sheriff, tried to put him down. 
He had been accustomed for some years to govern at 
Canton, and spoke with an air of authority. " Who, sir, 
are you?" he demanded, addressing the offender. The 
offender replied in stentorian tones, " My name is O'Gormau 
Mahon." " I tell that gentleman to take off that badge,'' 
replied the Sheriff. There was a moment's pause, and then 
O'Gorman Mahon replied, in slow clear accents, and with the 
utmost courtesy of demeanour, " This gentleman (laying 
his hand on his breast) tells that gentleman (pointing with 
the other to the Sheriff) that if that gentleman presumes 
to touch this gentleman, this gentleman will defend him- 
self against that gentleman, or any other gentleman, while 
he has the arm of a gentleman to protect him." 

The Sheriff sat down. 

There was a shout of triumph in court, and then Mr 
Vesey was proposed, and made an extremely telling speech- 
He was by no means unpopular, and as loud applause 
followed, O'Connell found it necessary to exert all his elo- 
quence in reply. He began by dissecting the political 
career of Mr Fitzgerald's supporters, and then by attacking 
Mr Fitzgerald. His great point here was that he had acted 
under Mr Perceval. " He is the friend of Peel," exclaimed 
O'Connell, "the bloody Perceval, and the candid and 
manly Peel ; and he is our friend, and everybody's friend ! " 

This observation had a powerful effect on the multitude. 
At the close of the poll on the first day, the two candidates 





TERRIFYING THE VOTERS. 






were found nearly equal. On the second day, O'Connell was 
considerably ahead. But the county gentlemen were deter- 
mined not to give in to the last. It was all the fault of the 
priests, they said ; if the priests could only be put down or 
got rid of, they might easily frighten their easily-terrified 
tenants. But, as Lord Colchester said, " the question was 
the means." At last they hoped for success. An attorney 
employed by Mr Fitzgerald dashed furiously into the court- 
house, and declared that a priest was " terrifying the 
voters." The counsel for O'Connell denied the charge ; the 
assessor demanded the culprit. The High Sheriff hoped 
for a bad case of" priestly intimidation." The victim was 
caught flagrante delicto. It was Father Murphy, of 
Corofin. He was brought before his judges, — a man of 
ghastly, almost spectral appearance, with heavy eyebrows 
overhanging his piercing eyes. " You were looking at my 
voters," roared the attorney. " But I said nothing," re- 
plied the priest; "and I suppose I may be allowed to 
look at my parishioners." " Not with such a face as that?' 
exclaimed the irate functionary. There was a shout of . 
laughter ; the priest certainly could not alter his natural 
appearance. One of O'ConnelPs agents rushed in now and 
appealed to the unhappy Sheriff. " We have no fair play, 
Mr Sheriff. Mr Singleton is frightening his tenants ; he 
caught hold of one just now and threatened vengeance 
against him." 

A priest, indeed, might not even " look " at a voter or 



give him advice, but a landlord might drive his unhappy 
serfs before him to the poll like sheep, and, if the}' dared 
resist, threaten them with " inconvenience " in the future. 

Mr Vandaleur, of Kilrush, drove in to Ennis with three 
hundred tenants behind him guarded by military, a 
singular specimen of free voting, but one by no means 
uncommon even at the present day. As they approached 
the town, Mr Vandaleur took the footman's place behind 
his own carriage to watch them. But in vain. As they 
passed O'Connell's hotel, he came on a stand from whence 
he and his friends addressed the voters from time to time. 
The air was rent with a shout for the Liberator ; the crowd 
dexterously shut in the voters from Mr Vandaleur's car- 
riage, and he was obliged to pass on and leave the tenants 
to vote as they pleased, or as they dared, with the pro- 
spect of such " inconvenience " as demands of rent they 
could not pay, of loss of custom, or of wholesale ejectment. 

O'Connell was returned triumphantly, and the much- 
enduring Sheriff was obliged to announce the fact with 
such resignation as he could command. The air was rent 
with acclamations, with such shouts as only Irish lungs 
can give and Irish hearts can suggest. O'Connell ad- 
dressed the people in the intoxication of gladness, and, 
with his usual courtesy, for he was never sarcastic without 
cause, he paid Mr Fitzgerald some well-merited compli- 
ments on the manner in which he sustained his defeat, and 
asked a hearty cheer for him. He apologised to him for 



any hard things he had said in the heat of the canvass, and 
said Mr Fitzgerald was in many ways worthy of his Anglo- 
Irish patronymic. 

Sliiel came out in great force. He spoke strongly of 
the absurd party-cry which was then beginning to be raised, 
and which will probably increase more every day in in- 
tensity. So long as the priests and people were fettered by 
penal laws, there was no complaint ; only Government was 
very willing to pension the clergy if they would act as 
spies. But the clergy would neither have the pension nor 
undertake the duty. They were indeed at liberty to inter- 
fere for the Government as much as they liked ; but if 
they dared speak their own minds, or advise the people to 
give their votes according to their consciences, no matter 
what the consequence might be — if they told them that 
voting was a solemn and sacred duty, for which they were 
individually responsible to God and their country, then 
up rose a clamour against " priestly interference," and a 
demon shout of rage against " priestly dictatiou." 

Sliiel was a Catholic, but he was not ashamed of his 
faith or of its priesthood. 

" Do not be surprised," he exclaimed, in those thrilling tones he 
knew so well how to use, — " do not be surprised that the peasantry 
should thus at once throw off their allegiance to you, when they are 
under the operation of emotions which it would be wonderful if they 
could resist. The feeling by which they are now actuated would 
make them not only vote against their landlords, but would make 
them rush into the field, scale the batteries of a fortress, and mount 



5.34 



SPEECH OF SEIEL. 



the breach. I hear it said, that before many days go by there will 
be many tears shed in the hovels of your slaves, and that you will 
take a terrible vengeance of their treason. . . . But you will ask, 
Wherefore should they prefer their priests to their landlords, and 
have purer reverence for the altars of their religion than for the 
counter on which you calculate your rents 1 Ah ! gentlemen, consider 
a little the relation in which the priest stands towards the peasant. 
Let us put the priest into one scale, and the landlord into the other, 
and let us see which should preponderate. I will take an excellent 
landlord and an excellent priest. The landlord shall be Sir Edward 
O'Brien, and the priest shall be Mr Murphy, of Corofin. Who is 
Sir Edward O'Brien 1 A gentleman who has a great fortune, who 
lives in a splendid mansion, and who, from the windows of a palace, 
looks upon possessions almost as wide as those which his ancestors 
beheld from the summit of their feudal towers. His tenants 
pay him their rents twice a year, and they have their land at a 
moderate rate. So much for the landlord. I come now to Father 
Murphy, of Corofin. Where does he reside 1 In a humble abode, 
situated at the foot of a mountain, and in the midst of dreariness 
and waste. He dwells in the midst of his parishioners, and is their 
benefactor, their friend, their father. It is not only in the actual 
ministry of the sacraments of religion that he stands as an object of 
affectionate reverence among them. I saw him, indeed, at his altar, 
surrounded by thousands, and felt myself the influence of his con- 
tagious and enthusiastic devotion. He addressed the people in 
the midst of a rude edifice, and in a language which I did not 
understand (the old Irish) ; but I could perceive what a command 
he has over the minds of his devoted followers. It is not merely 
as the celebrator of the rites of divine worship that he is dear to his 
flock : he is their companion, the mitigator of their calamities, the 
soother of their afflictions, the trustee of their hearts, the repository 
of their secrets, the guardian of their interests, and the sentinel of 
their death-beds. A peasant is dying ; in the midst of the winter's 
night a knock is heard at the door of the priest, and he is told that 



Vl el 



k 



°> 



O'COJfNELL'S TRIUMPH COMPLETE. 



555 



his parishioner requires his spiritual assistance ; the wind is howling, 
the snow descends upon the hills, and the rain and storm beat 
against his face ; yet he goes forth, hurries to the hovel of the ex- 
piring wretch, and taking his station beside the mass of pestilence 
of which the bed of straw is composed, bends to receive the last 
whisper which unloads the heart of its guilt, though the lips of the 
sinner should be tainted with disease, and he should exhale mor- 
tality in his breath. Gentlemen, this is not the language of artificial 
declamation ; this is not the mere extravagance of rhetorical phrase. 
Every word of this is the truth — the notorious, palpable, and un- 
questionable truth. You know it ; every one of you knows it to be 
true ; and now let me ask you, Can you wonder for a moment that 
the people should be attached to their clergy, and should follow 
their ordinances as if they were the injunctions of God 1 Gentle- 
men, forgive me if I venture to supplicate, on behalf of your poor 
tenants, for mercy to them. Pardon them, in the name of that God 
who will forgive you your offences in the same measure of compassion 
which you will show to the trespasses of others. Do not, in the 
name of that Heaven before whom every one of us, whether land- 
lord, priest, or tenant, must at last appear, do not persecute these 
poor people ; don't throw their children out upon the public road ; 
don't send them forth to shiver and to die." 



O'ConneU's triumph was complete. The Catholics at 
last had a representative. He was chaired in Ennis, and 
he was followed by thousands on his route home. Even the 
military could not restrain their exultation. Why should 
they, since so many of them were of his own nation and 
his own faith ? They began to see that they might be some- 
thing more than mere fighting machines for a nation who 
condescended to accept their sword and blood on the field 
of battle, but who denied them the right to receive the con- 



solation of their religion as they lay in the agony of 
death. 8 

In England the news of O'ConnelPs election excited 
absolute consternation. The slaves of political bondage had 
dared to assert themselves. Very glorious, indeed, it would 
have been had such self-assertion occurred in any other 
country, or had it been made by any other people. A fight 
for liberty, physically or morally, is seldom appreciated near 
home. It was true, indeed, that the Irish had been pro- 
mised for a long time that " something should be done for 
them." They were to stay quiet, " perfectly quiet," for a 



8 The Duke of Wellington, in 1829, addressing the House of Lords in 
favour of Catholic Emancipation, observed — " It is already well known 
to your Lordships, that of the troops which our gracious sovereign did 
me the honour to entrust to my command at various periods during the 
war — a war undertaken expressly for the purpose of securing the happy 
institutions and independence of the country — that at least one-half were 
Koman Catholics. My Lords, when I call your recollection to this fact, 
I am sure all further eulogy is unnecessary. . . . "We must also confess 
that, without Catholic blood and Catholic valour, no victory could ever 
have been obtained, and the first military talents in Europe might have 
been excited in vain at the head of an army. My Lords, if on the eve 
of any of those hard-fought days, on which I had the honour to com- 
mand them, I had thus addressed my Roman Catholic troops : — ' You 
well know that your country either so suspects your loyalty, or so dis- 
likes your religion, that she has not thought proper to admit you 
amongst the ranks of her citizens ; if on that account you deem it an 
act of injustice on her part to require you to shed your blood in her 
defence, you are at liberty to withdraw ' — I am quite sure, my Lords, 
that, however bitter the recollections which it awakened, they would 
have spurned the alternative with indignation ; for the hour of danger 
and glory is the hjur in which the gallant, the generous-hearted Irish- 



few years, and then, if the whole affair was not forgotten, 
perhaps "the claim might be considered." Even English 
statesmen could see the absurdity of this. 

The news of O'Connell's return for Clare was received 
in London on the 3d of July 1828. The indignation and 
excitement in political circles was great. A Protestant 
Club was established immediately in London, and Dr 
Philpotts wrote to Lord Colchester, that " stringent condi- 
tions " — whatever that might mean — should be imposed on 
the Irish for their " violence," — the " violence " having 
consisted solely in the constitutional exercise of their 



man best knows his duty, and is most determined to perform it. But, 
if, my Lords, it had been otherwise ; if they had chosen to desert tin- 
cause, . . . the remainder of the troops would undoubtedly have main- 
tained the honour of the British arms, yet, as I have just said, no efforts 
of theirs could ever have crowned us with victory. Yes, my Lords, it is 
mainly to the Irish Catholics that we all owe our proud pre-eminence 
in our military career; and that I, personally, am indebted for the 
laurels with which you have been pleased to decorate my brow— fox the 
honours which you have so bountifully lavished on me, and for the fair 
fame (I prize it above all other rewards) which my country, in its <*ene- 
rous kindness, has bestowed upon me. I cannot but feel, my Lords, 
that you yourselves have been chiefly instrumental in placing this heavy 
debt of gratitude upon me— greater, perhaps, than has ever fallen to the 
lot of any individual ; and, however flattering the circumstance, it often 
places me in a very painful position. Whenever I meet (and it is almost 
an everyday occurrence) with any of those brave men, who, in common 
with others, are the object of this bill, and who have so often borne me 
on the tide of victory ; when I see them still branded with the imputa- 
tion of a divided allegiance, still degraded beneath the lowest menial 
and still proclaimed unfit to enter within the pale of the constitution 
I feel almost ashamed of the honours which have been lavished upon 



m 



2 



W 



rights as electors. Parliament was accused of " shameful 
neglect ; " but his Lordship, a sharp practical man, had wit 
enough to see that if the " elective franchise " could be 
restrained iu Ireland, that this would be the effective 
remedy for all future evils. The suggestion had at least 
the merit of simplicity ; for clearly if the Irish Catholics 
could be deprived of a voice in the choice of their represen- 
tatives, they would not have selected one so obnoxious to 
the English Protestants. He was not so much afraid of 
the upper classes. He hoped they would fall into the 
standing course of parliamentary ambition, and then would 
not trouble themselves much about the interests of the 
Church. 9 Henry Philpotts was an acute man, he knew 
the value of worldly advancement, none better ; and he 
knew how such advancement would prove a salve if not a 
sedative to the conscience. 

The bishops and the priests were the great difficulty. 
They could not be bribed, so a wily plan was suggested by 
this worldly prelate. He proposed that an " influence might 
be acquired on the nomination of priests at Rome by ap- 
pointing a resident Minister there to treat personally on 
political concerns." Few people, indeed, have suffered for 
their faith as the Irish have done ; and had this scheme 
succeeded, it would have been the last and the bitterest 
ingredient in their cup of sorrow. It was the old battle 



1 



JACK LAWLESS AND THE PRIEST. 559 

between God and Ctesar ; and had the Church been Caesar's 
Church, she must surely have yielded. The protection of 
England would have been found a tempting bait, the very 
prestige of England's name would have influenced any 
merely Erastiau establishment. Ireland was despised by the 
world, England was esteemed. There was even the further 
temptation that a certain odour of respectability pervaded 
the few English Catholics who had remained faithful 
to their Church, because they were English — and, un- 
happily then, as at a later period, a few were found who 
thought first of their nationality, and last of their religion. 
But the Catholic faith is the religion of all peoples, because 
it is divine ; and even had Ireland been less faithful to the 
Holy See, any attempt to sow discord would have equally 
failed. 

And yet the priests were really the " head pacificators " 
of Ireland. Jack Lawless went on a mission to the North, 
and, with his characteristic recklessness, contrived to 
exasperate the Orangemen, and afterwards escape from 
the scene of discord. Happily a priest was with him, and 
he remained behind, and, by his wisdom and influence, 
saved the country from fearful bloodshed. 1 



1 The Rev. Mr M'Donough, who afterwards emigrated to America. 
" Mooney's Lectures on Irish History," p. 1284 ; a most valuable work, 
published by P. Donahoe, Franklin Street, Boston. Lord Angle'sea 
Baid to Sir John Byng that " the Protestants of the North were much 
more violent, and likely to disturb the public peace, than the Catholics 
of the South." — Life of Lord Palmerston, vol. i. p. 311. 



O'Connell freely used his " frank " as a member of 
Parliament, but be did not take his seat. It was a time of 
intense agitation and anxiety to all parties. Tbe Bruns- 
wickers, as the Protestant Clubs now called themselves, 
were acting with such gross violence as to form an un- 
pleasant contrast to the well-ordered Catholic Association. 
The Lord-Lieutenant declared that he could keep the 
country quite quiet for one year, and no longer. He com- 
plained bitterly that the Duke of Wellington had only 
sent him official letters, and that he was kept completely iu 
the dark as to the plans of Government. 

The Solicitor-General Dokerty said he could just keep 
the country together till Parliament met, and he would 
" hand it over to the table of the House. 2 " A Protestant 
Archbishop of Dublin talked about the "insane" declara- 
tion of the associate demagogues, and the still more insane 
attempts of the leading demagogue to thrust himself into 
Parliament. 3 The " leading demagogue," meanwhile, went 
on the even tenor of his way. Lord Arden said that no 
one knew anything about the state of Ireland, even if they 
lived in it like himself, but left it to be understood that he 
was an exception ; and said .also that O'Connell kept up 
a " continual ferment." Lord Eldon showed his hopeless 
ignorance of the Catholic religion, by saying that O'Connell 
would not be allowed to take his seat in the House, unless 



" Palmerston," vol i. p. 312. 



» " Colchester," vol. iii. p. 582. 



KING DAN. 



561 



he took the oaths, and that he would not do unless he 
could get absolution, obviously believiug that it would be 
quite possible for a man to get absolution for taking a 
solemn oath that his own religion was blasphemous and 
idolatrous. He declared that nothing was talked of " which 
interested anybody the least in the world except the elec- 
tion of Mr O'Connell and the mischief it must produce;" 
and he had just intelligence enough to see, what most, in- 
telligent men saw very plainly, that " the business must 
bring the Roman Catholic question, which has been so 
often discussed, to a crisis and a conclusion." The crisis 
was the debate on Emancipation, and the conclusion was 
the granting of that act of common justice. 4 

In October 1828, Lord Anglesea issued a proclamation 
to put down the disturbances in the North, and at the 
same time O'Connell issued a proclamation to put down 
faction fights in the South. He was, indeed, becoming the 
uncrowned king of Ireland. Few crowned monarchs of 
that country had ever held such sway. He was King Dan 
to four millions of people, and his word was law. 

The Duke of Wellington kept his opinions to himself, 
but there is no doubt that he saw Catholic Emancipation 
must be granted ; and once he made up his mind, action 
soon followed. The Liberal party, or, as they were then 
usually denominated, the Whigs, were extremely angry to 



find that a Tory Ministry was to have the credit of doing 
what they should have done if they had had the Duke's 
courage. 

At the close of the year, a declaration was drawn up 
by the Duke of Leinster, and signed by two dukes, seven 
marquises, twenty-seven earls, seven viscounts, twenty- 
two barons, fifty-two members of the House of Commons, 
and upwards of two thousand gentlemen. They asked for 
a settlement of the Catholic claims, proving that the 
astute Dr Philpotts was not far wrong when he said that 
fully one-half the House of Commons was in favour of 
granting justice to Catholics— though he did not call 
Emancipation by that name — and that nearly half the 
Upper House were of the same opinion. 

In December 1828, Dr Curtis, the Catholic Archbishop 
of Dublin, who was an old and valued friend of the 
Duke of Wellington, wrote to him begging that he would 
reconsider the state of Ireland, which was certainly most 
alarming, and apply some remedy. The Duke replied 
promptly : — 

" Lokdon, December 11, 1828. 

" My dear Sir, — I have received your letter of the 4th instant ; 
and I assure you that you do me justice in believing that I am 
sincerely anxious to witness the settlement of the Roman Catholic 
question, which, by benefiting the State, would confer a benefit on 
every individual belonging to it. But I confess that I see no pro- 
spect of such a settlement. Party has been mixed up with the con- 
sideration of the question to such a degree, and such violence per- 
vades every discussion of it, that it is impossible to expect to prevail 




WELLINGTON AND ANGLESEA. 



upon men to consider it dispassionately. If we could bury it in 
oblivion for a short time, and employ that time diligently in the 
consideration of its difficulties on all sides (for they are very great), 
I should not despair of seeing a satisfactory remedy. 

"Believe me, my dear sir, ever your most faithful humble servant, 

" Wellington." 
One of the Archbishop's curates was with him at 
breakfast; he obtained a copy of the letter, and it ap- 
peared at once in the papers. The sensation which it 
created was immense. The Duke wrote an expostulation 
to Dr Curtis, but it was too late. Dr Curtis had enclosed 
the laconic epistle to Lord Anglesea, and Lord Angle- 
sea's reply soon found its way to the papers also. He 
recommended the Catholics to persevere in constitutional 
agitation; and for this letter he was at once recalled. 
On his departure, he received such an ovation from the 
Irish as had never been granted to any other representa- 
tive of royalty. 5 



6 Lord Anglesea was very unpopular during his second term of office. 
Mr O'Neil Daunt says : — " During his second viceroyalty he became one 
day the subject of conversation in O'Connell's house. ' Poor Anglesea ! ' 
said O'Connell ; 'the unfortunate man was not wicked, but misguided.' 
' That is exactly what lie says of you,' replied N. P. O'Gorman. ' One day 
I visited him he said to me : " That unfortunate O'Connell means well, 
but he is misguided ! " ' O'Connell laughed heartily. ' Certainly,' said 
he, ' Lord Anglesea was wonderfully weak and misinformed. Only con- 
ceive his gravely assuring the British Government that I had little or no 
influence in Ireland ! ' " Though Lord Anglesea was so popular once, 
he never travelled without a " life preserver." . On one occasion he went 
to dine with Lord Concurry, but would not take an escort. The car- 
riage was ordered early, as it was not considered prudent to be late on the 



5G4 ALLEGED POLICY OF THE DUKE. 

The Duke's letter proved him to be a greater adept at the 

sword than at the pen. The idea of " burying a subject iu 

oblivion "' while it was being diligently discussed, could 

not fail to provoke a laugh. It is said that the Duke had 

private knowledge that George IV. was near his end; that 

at his death one great obstacle would be removed ; and that 

he desired to keep matters quiet until that event took place. 

Whatever his motive or intentions may have been, the 

following sentences were inserted in the king's speech on 

the 4th February 1829:— 

" His Majesty laments that in that part of the United Kingdom 
(Ireland) au association still exists which is dangerous to the public 

road. At the last moment Lord Anglesea's " stick " could not be found, 
and he positively refused to Leave without it. No one had noticed it 
positively, but it was at last found in a summer-house where he had 
spent the afternoon. When the carriage moved off Lord Anglesea 
touched a spring and the slide flew open, showing a most formidable 
rapier. The handle concealed a pocket-pistol, into which was inserted 
a dagger-shaped blade covered with a guard. This formidable weapon 
was given to him by the Duke of York, who had a number of them pre- 
pared for himself and his friends after the discovery of the Thistlewood 
conspiracy." — Chiefs of Parties, Maddyn, vol. i. pp. 160-8. 
' The Times of the day had a good s<ptib on the subject : — 
" To catch the banker aU have sought, 
But still the rogue unhurt is ; 
While t'other juggler — who 'd have thought t— 
Though slippery long, has just been caught, 

By old Archbishop Curtis. 

And, such the power of Papal crook, 

The crosier scarce had quivered 

About his ears, when, lo ! the Duka 

Was of a bull delivered." 

— Life and Times of Dr Doyle, vol. ii. p. 109. 



m 






THE KINO'S SPEECH. 



peace. . . . His Majesty feels assured that you will commit to him 
such powers as may enable him to maintain his just authority. His 
Majesty recommends that, when this essential object shall have been 
accomplished, you should take into your deliberate consideration 
the whole condition of Ireland, and that you should revise the 
laws which impose disabilities on His Majesty's Roman Catholic 
subjects." 

This startling announcement was followed by a salve to 

the Protestant, as it had been preceded by a threat to the 

Catholic. The Duke manifestly knew how to make a 

royal speech better than how to word a private epistle. 

" You will consider whether the removal of these disabilities can 
be effected consistently with the full and permanent security of our 
Establishments in Church and State, with the maintenance of the Re- 
formed Religion established by law, and of the rights and privileges 
of the bishops and of the clergy of this nation, and of the churches 
committed to their charge." 

The publication of this speech convulsed the country from 
one end to the other. The " glorious constitution " was 
in danger, the Pope would be King of Ireland, the Protes- 
tants would be massacred, the Duke was in league with the 
priests. Nothing was too absurd to be said, and nothing 
was too absurd to be believed by men who had allowed their 
prejudices to run away with their common sense. 7 * 

In the debate on the address, in answer to the speech 
from the throne, Lord Eldon declared " that if ever a 
Roman Catholic was permitted to form part of the Legis- 

7 " Life of the Duke of Wellington," by the Rev. J. R. Gleig, p. 460. 
Yonge's " Life of Wellington," vol. iii. pp. 171-180. 



lature of this country, from that moment the sun of Great 
Britain would set." 8 So tenacious is prejudice, that if he 
had lived to the present day, facts to the contrary would 
not have changed his opinion. 

The Duke of Cumberland declared that if the king gave 
his assent to Catholic Emancipation, he would leave the 
country never to return to it again. 9 

The bill passed through both Houses with extremely 
large majorities, that in the Upper House being 213 against 
109 ; but the king's signature was still necessary, and was 
not obtained without some difficulty. The truth was, that 
he only yielded to the pressure of circumstances, which lie 
could not withstand; and exclaimed petulantly, " The Duke 
of Wellington is king of England, O'Connell is king of 
Ireland, and I suppose I am only Dean of Windsor." 
The royal assent was given on the 13th of April 1829. 

A clause was introduced into the Act, manifestly to annoy 
O'Connell, that no Catholic could take his seat unless he 
should be elected " after the commencement of the Act." 
O'Connell hoped to evade the difficulty by offering Sir 
Edward Denny £3000 for one of his boroughs, but the 
offer was refused. O'Connell therefore determined to claim 




8 " Life of Lord Eldon," voL iii. p. 63. 

9 Letter from tlie Right Honourable T. Grenville to the Duke of Buck- 
ingham. He adds, " A declaration to that effect may produce a very 
general cheer even in the dignified assembly of the House of Lords." — 
Memoirs of George IV. vol. ii. p. 393. 



REFUSED A SEAT IN THE HOUSE. 






I 



his own seat, and presented himself for that purpose at the 
bar of the House on the 15th of May. His appearance was 
expected, and made an immense sensation. He was intro- 
duced by Lords Dungannon and Ebrington. 

The following extract, from the next issue of the 
Times, gives the best -contemporary account of the whole 
affair : — 

" The attempt was made by Mr O'Connell last night to take his 
seat in the House of Commons, and the narrative of the proceeding 
will be read with interest in our parliamentary report. Yet that 
can convey but an imperfect idea of the silent, the almost breathless 
attention with which he was received in the House, advancing to 
and retiring from the table. The benches were filled in an unusual 
degree with members, and there is no recollection of so large a 
number of peers brought by curiosity into the House of Commons. 
The hon. gentleman was introduced by Lords Dungannon and 
Ebrington ; a perfect stillness ensued. By his action he evidently 
declined the first oath which was tendered to him— that of supre- 
macy and allegiance— and required the oath prescribed by the late 
Act. The explanation by the Speaker to the House of what had 
taken place was clear, his expression of countenance and manner 
towards the hon. gentleman on whom he fixed his regards extremely 
courteous, and his declaration that ' he must withdraw,' firm and 
authoritative. Mr O'Connell for a moment looked round, as one who 
had reason to expect support, and this failing, he bowed most re- 
spectfully and withdrew. After his departure, Mr Brougham spoke, 
but in a somewhat subdued tone ; some discussion followed, but the 
debate on the subject is fixed for Monday next." 

O'Connell expected to have been heard at the bar of the 
House on this occasion, but he was refused. 
On the 18th of May, Peel proposed that he should be 



568 ADDRESS AT THE EAR OF THE HOUSE. 

allowed that privilege, and on the following day he ap- 
peared at the bar of the House, attended by Mr Pierce 
Mahony, his solicitor. The House was so crowded that 
many peers were unable to obtain seats in the space al- 
lotted to them under the gallery. The Duke of Sussex was 
there listening with breathless attention to every word 
which fell from the lips of the "Irish agitator; " and when 
O'Connell returned to his place, after a most masterly 
speech, he found it occupied by the Duke of Orleans, who 
next year ascended the French throne as Louis Philippe, 
Mr Mahony' s seat being occupied by his son, the Due de 
Chartres, both of whom congratulated O'Connell on his 
position and his success. 

As it was a question of law, Sir N. Tindal, the Solicitor- 
General, rose to reply, and he opened his speech by passing 
an evidently sincere compliment to O'Connell. 1 His ad- 
dress, indeed, deserved all the praise it received, but one 
part was especially telling, and was cheered loudly by the 
Whig party, although such manifestations of applause 
were not usual on such occasions. After he had presented 
all the arguments in his favour, he said, " I cannot give 
any other construction to the enactments of this statute ; 
for it is impossible to suppose that a great nation, and the 
Government of a great nation, could combine with a measure 
of national justice like this an act of outlawry against an 

1 The Attorney-General, Sir C. Wetheral, had resigned his seat on 
the fast introduction of the Emancipation Bill. 



7 ' ■ J 






'0 

m 

KM 




individual, solely because that individual devoted himself 
heart and soul to the obtaining of this great measure of 
national justice for himself and his fellow-countrymen." 
The dignity, tact, and temper of this rebuke was admir- 
able, and was in perfect keeping with his manner and 
matter throughout. 

On the following day O'Connell appeared at the bar for 
the third time, and was told by the Speaker that he could 
not take his seat unless he took the oath of supremacy. 

" ' Are you willing to take the oath of supremacy ? ' asked the 
Speaker. 

" ' Allow me to look at it,' replied O'Connell. 

" The oath was handed to O'Connell, and he looked at it in sil- 
ence for a few seconds ; then raising his head, he said, ' In this 
oath I see one assertion as to a matter of fact, which I know to be 
untrue. I see a second assertion as to a matter of opinion, which 
I believe to be untrue. I therefore refuse to take this oath.' " 

O'Connell at once wrote his second address to the elec- 
tors of Clare, and boasted, as well he might, that they had 
conquered the Government. He told his constituents that 
they had " converted Peel and conquered Wellington." It 
is no exaggeration to say that no man ever achieved such a 
moral victory, and that the Catholics of the present day 
■owe to his boldness and courage the position they hold 
in the British Legislature. If O'Connell had not risen in. 
his might to do as well as to dare, it is not improbable 
that Catholics might still be timidly petitioning for relief, 
instead of enjoying the liberty of free-born subjects. 




The papers of the day were unusually full of the event. 
The Times had a leader on the subject, which was con- 
gratulatory. 2 

It was perfectly well known in England that O'Connell 
would be re-elected for Clare, and anything almost was 
preferred to a second exhibition of the national strength 
and national opinion. The Times of May 18 spoke 
severely of the wording of the Act, and hinted that it was 
not creditable to the " sincerity," and certainly not to the 
"sagacity," of its author; and concluded that "His 
Majesty's Ministers must deeply regret the necessity they 
caused for another Clare election." 

Reports had already reached London that O'Connell 
would be returned without opposition and without expense. 
He wrote himself to Mr Roche, on the 22d of May, " I am 
determined to contest Clare, which I will now, even if I 
was undetermined before I got your kindest note. My 
accounts thence are most favourable." 8 

The Brunswick Clubs had their paper, called the Bruns- 

2 " It will lie a gratification to Mm, or at least an abatement of his dis- 
appointment, to observe that his exclusion does not arise from private 
opposition, from personal pique, or petty spite (which we dreaded), but 
is the result of a candid discussion of the question. We should have 
been more contented if a case (and that thought by some eminent 
authorities a doubtful one), which, by the nature of things, could not be 
drawn into a precedent, had been slurred over, and the honourable 
gentleman had been permitted to slip into the House through the open- 
ing which was made between the old and new law." 

3 " Roche's Essays," vol. ii. p. 109. 









SUPERIORITY TO ABUSE AND RIDICULE. 571 



wick Star, and it lavished abuse and ridicule, both in prose 
and in execrable verse ; but the great chieftain went on 
the even tenor of his way, taking it all for what it was 
worth, vox et prater ea nihil. He looked for fame in 
another place, and under other circumstances. Even his 
own countrymen, and those who honoured him most, had 
scarcely fathomed the depths of this man's religious mind, 
or suspected the source of his high principles of action. 
It is impossible in the present work to give details of 
his inner life; but no history of him, however brief, 
would be complete without some allusion to this subject. 
The following letter, which he addressed to the Rev. 
Father O'Meara, shows the source from whence his 
strength was obtained, and the motives which actuated 
him : — 

" Confidential. 
"19 Bury Street, St James', ISiA March 1829. 

" Rev. AND DEAR Sir, — I am standing counsel for the friars, so 
that you owe me no apology nor any thanks for attending to any 
affairs of yours. My fee is paid by one moment of recollection of 
me occasionally in the pure and Holy Sacrifice. 

"I have the happiness to tell you the proposed law is one which 
has been well described as a class by the celebrated jurist Bentham 
in one word, unexecutable — that is, that can never be executed. 
This is literally one of those laws. It is insolent enough in its pre- 
tensions. It will be, and must be, totally inefficient in practice, 
for these reasons — 1st, There is no power at all given to magistrates 
to interfere in this subject, nor any jurisdiction whatsoever given 
to magistrates in that respect. 2dly, No private person can pro- 
secute any friar or monk ; nobody can do it but the Attorney- 



General, so that you are thus free from private malice. 3dly, The 
person prosecuted — that is, if any friar or monk be prosecuted, he 
is not bound to disclose anything, or to say one word, but simply to 
allow his attorney to plead nil debet to the information. Thus you 
see nobody will be obliged to accuse himself. This will put the 
prosecutor on his proofs. Now, 4thly, The prosecutor will have 
nobody to prove his case, because, mark, there is a penalty on all 
persons assisting at the taking of the vows ; therefore if any of 
these persons be examined as witnesses, they can with perfect safety 
object to give evidence, and totally refuse, lest they should convict 
themselves. 

" Thus you see that it is almost impossible any prosecution 
should be instituted at all ; and it is quite impossible that any pro- 
secution should be successful. Besides, the existing class of friars 
are all legalised ; my advice, therefore, decidedly is, that the friars 
should keep quiet. Let this Act take its course, recollecting, also, 
that you will have Catholic members in Parliament before the time 
comes to give these laws any effect even in point of form. 

" Go on with your building and prosper. Be so good as put down 
my name for £50. I will give it to you when I arrive in Cork. 
Regretting I cannot afford to give more, I have the honour to be, 
with sincere respect, your faithful and obedient servant, 

" Daniel O'Connell. 

" To Rev. W. A. O'Meara, 

Franciscan Convent, Cork." 

O'Connell was received in Ireland as conqueror. As he 
passed down to Clare the people crowded round him with 
shouts of triumph ; at night the town was illuminated. 
He arrived in Limerick at eight in the morning. The 
fatigue was too great even for the herculean frame of the 
" Agitator," and he was obliged to rest for a few hours. 
Then he came out to the people and began his address, as 





usual, with the query, "How is Andy Watson? 4 The 
Limerick tradesmen had assembled with flags and banners ; 
the Limerick people had assembled in their thousands, and, 
with cheers and shouts, escorted O'Connell out on the 
Ennis road. As he neared the town of victory he was met 
by another multitude, who brought a triumphal car with 
them, and on this he was driven into the city. 

The forty-shilling freeholders had ceased to vote, and 
O'Connell had now to deal with a new class, the ten-pound 
freeholders. But there was more. He had to console or 
satisfy those who lost their votes, and he had to propitiate 
those who gained. But he was equal to the occasion. 

William Smith O'Brien now appeared in public for the 
first time. He opposed O'Connell, and declared that he 
had hindered instead of helping the Catholic cause. He 
quoted the old arguments, which are now and then adduced 
even at the present day. He had the temerity to declare 
that the English were disgusted by O'ConnelPs agitation, 
and that if he had not agitated, Emancipation would have 
been granted long before. He forgot, or he did not find it 

* Andy Watson was the editor of the local Tory paper. See " His- 
tory of Limerick," by Maurice Lenihan, Esq., J.P., p. 482. Undoubt- 
edly one great element of O'ConnelPs success was his tact in adapting 
himself to circumstances. When he visited a town or village, a court- 
house or drawing-room, he at once made himself perfectly au courant of 
what was going on, and then, with consummate tact, he availed himself 
of his information. This gift of adaptability is one which few public 
men possess, but those who do possess it are generally masters of the 
situation. 



I 






m 







674 



THE CRITIC FLY. 



convenient to remember, that both the Duke of Wellington 
and Mr Peel had admitted that the consideration of the 
Catholic claims was the result of fear. If O'Connell had not 
roused up a spirit in Ireland which had made them fear, and 
if he had not originated a clamour which English mem- 
bers of Parliament could not help hearing, it is impossible 
to say how much longer justice would have been deferred. 
There will always be a certain class of men who will attack 
success. They cannot deny a fact, but they at once pretend, 
with the most daring unconsciousness of their own preten- 
sions, to show how that fact could have happened without 
the intervention of the person who accomplished it. They 
make a votive offering to their own sagacity, and would 
have men believe that they should have been the authors 
of the success, only that they were not, from fault of cir- 
cumstances with which they did not choose to contend. 
They may find a few jealous individuals to applaud them 
or rejoice in their theory, but the historians of the future 
will give a very different verdict. 

O'Connell proceeded at once to expose the origin of this 
feeling, which was not very creditable. Steele attacked 
O'Brien personally (in private). The result was a hostile 
meeting at Kilburn in London. Shots were exchanged, 
and Mr O'Brien expressed himself satisfied through his 
second. But Steele had prepared himself for a campaign, 
and would have gone on until one or both were on 
the ground, if O'Gorman Mahon had not come forward 



w 

1 









Pi 



OUTWITTED, BUT NOT OUTVOTED. 575 

and expressed a wish to have an " affair of honour " on his 
account. They were not Clare men, and considered that 
Smith O'Brien had cast an imputation upon them by 
asserting that none of the Clare " gentlemen " had sup- 
ported O'Connell. Smith O'Brien seems to have been 
satisfied with his esoape, for he declared that he had not 
included Mr 0' Gorman Mahon in the obnoxious expres- 
sion. 

O'Connell ran up from Ennis to Dublin, and found him- 
self in an unpleasant position. A pugilistic attorney, 
known as Toby Glascock, threatened to fight O'Connell; 
and finding that O'Connell would not fight, threatened to 
make his servant horsewhip him. This man was generally 
supposed to be deficient in intellect, and for this very reason 
O'Connell thought it advisable to have him bound over to 
keep the peace. He appeared in court for the purpose. 
Mr Glascock declared that his own size (he was a small 
man) should have saved O'Connell from any apprehension, 
and he offered to produce his servant. He dived under the 
attorney's table, lifted up a large bag, untied the strings, 
shook out the corners, and tumbled out a little black boy on 
the table, clothed in green livery, and grinning from ear to 
ear. The court was convulsed with laughter, and for once 
in his long career O'Connell found the joke against him. 

O'Connell was returned for Clare for the second time 
on the 30th of July 1829; and wherever he went, he 
was again received by the people with the wildest euthu- 



siasm. He needed a time of rest after this long period of 
excitement and heavy labour, and repaired for this purpose 
to his ancestral home at Darrynane. But rest was not 
for him in this world. He was the defender of the 
people's rights, as well as the king of the people's hearts ; 
and wherever those rights were in danger, O'Connell was 
found at his post. 

The Liberator was always an early riser, and as he 
looked out of his bedroom window on a Sunday morning 
in October 1829, he saw a man on horseback approaching 
his house with a haste which indicated business. O'Con- 
nell went to him at once. His story was soon told. A 
conspiracy had been got up against the Catholics of Done- 
raile, and a number of men, some in the most respectable 
positions, were accused of an attempt to murder their Pro- 
testant neighbours. Several men had already been found 
guilty, and others were waiting their trial in Cork. Wil- 
liam Burke — his name deserves to be recorded — had set 
off the previous evening, and had ridden without stopping 
a journey of twenty Irish miles, to secure the services of 
O'Connell. " If you don't undertake their defence," ex- 
claimed the man, " Pennefather and Doherty will hang 
every man of them, though they are as innocent as the 
unborn." 

O'Connell was soon in Cork. Burke rested only for two 
hours, and then set off to let his friends know that the 
Liberator was on the way. Relays of men were stationed 



J.; 



THE PROSECUTOR PAN1CSTRICKEN. 



m 



all along the road, with fresh fleet horses, to meet Burke 
on his return, so as to fly on at once with the news. At 
eight o'clock on the following morning Burke arrived back 
in Cork, and two hours later O'Connell was at the Court- 
house. His appearance gave an electric shock to the 
Attorney-General, who, it is said, turned white with anger 
and apprehension. 

O'Connell did not wait even to get food ; he asked per- 
mission of the Court to have his breakfast brought to him ; 
and while Mr Doherty opened his address, he demolished a 
large bowl of milk and some sandwiches. 6 From time to 
time, as the case proceeded, he would start up and exclaim, 
" That 's not law, sir." As O'Connell never made an asser- 
tion of this kind unless he was sure of its correctness, the 
Court was with him, and the Attorney-General was not a 
little discomposed. It was, however, by his skill in cross- 
examination that O'Connell brought out the truth. A 
man named Nowlan was the principal informer, and 
when he had been driven to contradict himself again and 
again, he roared out, « It 's little I thought I 'd have to 
meet you here, Mr O'Connell." 

The informer's statement was that a certain number of 
men had met in a tent at the fair of Eathclare, and that they 
had signed a paper declaring that one of those gentlemen 



•O'Connell was a voracious eater. Like most men who exercise 
their bram much, he was obliged to proportion the supply of physical 
material to the demand for mental effort. 

2o 



I"'',! 



I * 
It 




on whom they had designs should he shot. A gentle- 
man farmer named Leary was sworn against as the prin- 
cipal promoter of this diabolical scheme. He was tried 
with five other men, who were all sentenced to he hanged 
in seven days, though his own landlord, a gentleman of high 
respectability, to whomjie paid £250 per annum in rent, 
declared his moral certainty of the man's innocence. Baron 
Pennefather seems to have had his douhts, for he ordered 
the information taken before the magistrates to be sent for, 
and it was found that not one word was said in them of the 
tent scene. He called O'Connell to him, and showed him 
the papers, pointing out the omission. O'Connell was not 
slow to take the hint, and it soon became evident how 
much false swearing there had been. The Solicitor-General 
talked about "false facts;" but O'Connell detected the 
blunder. " False facts, Mr Solicitor! How can facts be 
false ? " "I have known false facts and false men," 
growled the representative of royalty. Doherty had an 
English pronunciation which was either natural or acquired. 
" You may go down, sir," he said to a witness. " Naw, 
daunt go down, sir," said O'Connell, and set the Court in 



The result was the acquittal of all the prisoners ; but 
the unhappy men who had been sentenced to be hanged on 
the informer's evidence were, as a great favour, only trans- 
ported for life. 




Cjntptcr Jfourffentlj. 



PARLIAMENTARY LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
1829-1839. 

THE WATERFORD ELECTION— MONTALEMBERT AND O'CONNELL— LETTERS TO THE 
PEOPLE OF IRELAND — LORD LEVESON OOWER — PALMERSTON AND WELLING- 
TON— HISTORY AND POLITICS — THE EMANCIPATION ACT NOT FOLLOWED BY 
THE MILLENNIUM — EXASPERATION OF THE ORANGEMEN AND DISTRESS AMONG 
THE PEASANTRY — TEMPORARY ARREST OF O'CONNELL LETTER TO DR MAC- 
HALE ANTI-TITHE RIOTS — IN PARLIAMENT — LORD ALTHORPE AND 

BHIEL — O'CONNELL'S MOTION FOR REPEAL — CATHEDRALS — LETTER — MEL- 
BOURNE AND O'CONNELL- — D'lSRAELI AND THE O'CONNELLS — LETTER — 
LYNDHURST'S ATTACK ON THE IRISH— BANQUETS — SPEECH OF DR MACHALE— 

LETTER O'CONNELL UNDERTAKES A RETREAT — RECEPTION AT THE ABBEY 

— LBXTEB8 — ENTERTAINED IN LONDON — DETLE3 THE HOUSE — LETTERS. 



i 



m 



f 
I 

4 



682 A RETAINER ACCEPTED AND DECLINED. 

people a taste for independence, and there was at least 
an apprehension they might begin to consider their votes 
their own. The Beresford family were wise in their 
generation. They secured the services of Mr Mahony 
as their counsel, and, through Mr Mahony, they thought 
to secure the services of O'Connell and Shiel. To O'Con- 
nell they offered a fee of £600, which was a good sum for 
him, and a small outlay for them, the seat having cost the 
family £35,000 in 1826. O'Connell was in Clare when he 
received the offer, and was at first disposed to accept it. 

One of his first objects — an object which he kept steadily 
and constantly before him — was to amalgamate all classes 
and creeds of Irishmen. This seemed a favoirrable oppor- 
tunity ; and in his reply to Mr Mahony, he said, " I am 
exceedingly delighted at the offer made me, as it proves 
that the memory of former dissensions is to be buried in 
oblivion." He said, further, that he would accept the 
retainer, if it was understood that his political principles 
and opinions should not be compromised in any way. The 
Beresford family were more than satisfied ; it was some- 
thing even not to have O'Connell against them. On con- 
sideration, however, O'Connell wrote again to Mr Mahony 
and declined. In the meantime the Times had got hold of 
the story, and renewed its previous opposition to O'Connell 
by attacking him for what he had not done. O'Connell' s 
reply was marked by length of invective rather than 
courteous denial. 




Iii the commencement of the year 1830 the Liberator 
addressed a number of letters to the people of Ireland, and 
opened a " Parliamentary office " for the furtherance of 
petitions to the Legislature. 

It was a most critical period of Irish history— a supreme 
moment at which peace waited to spread her wings over 
the two countries, and unite them, not merely in name, 
but in fact. After long delay, which almost deprived it of 
its freshness, the olive-branch was held out by England, 
but scarcely had Ireland grasped the peaceful emblem ere 
it was followed by a thunderbolt of impotent rage. 

O'Connell's fame was now European. When the King of 
Belgium was elected, three votes were given for O'Connell. 
France was agitated to its very centre, and some of its ablest 
men where asking themselves, What next ? and were look- 
ing to Ireland and O'Connell, not indeed with the view of 
making him monarch of their slippery throne, but of learn- 
ing from him how he worked bloodless social revolutions. 
The young Count de Montalembert was one of the men who 
looked, and one of the men who wished to learn. He 
had already planned a History of Ireland, but Victor 
Cousin had prevailed upon him to relinquish his plan. He 
was full of enthusiasm for this unknown land and this 
unknown man; and he set out for Ireland expecting to find 
his imaginary ideal, and met with the disappointment in- 
evitable under such circumstances. He expected to meet 
the O'Connell of his imagination, he found instead the 



e 






O'Connell of fact. We doubt if his ideal, had it been in 
existence, would ever have obtained Catholic Emancipation. 
There was rough, hard, stern work to do which never so 
much as entered into the imagination of the French poet- 
historian. It was charming, indeed, to meet a little ragged 
boy on the mountain-side, who knew the Hail Mary. Mon- 
talembert probably was not aware that there are very few 
Catholic Irish boys, ragged or otherwise, who do not know 
their prayers, and at least the essentials of their Catechism. 
But it was quite another affair to hear O'Connell address a 
crowd of frieze-coated peasants in homely accents, and to 
miss that peculiar polish of manner and gesture which is 
natural to the Celtic Gaul. Montalembert forgot the 
" three days of July," with its brutal carnage ; he forgot 
that the very "agitation," which seemed to his poetical 
fancy so commonplace and so distasteful, was a safety- 
valve for passions which might otherwise have found vent 
in deeds of violence. But in truth the man who had 
been courted by Felicite de Lamennais, and made the 
companion of Henri Lacordaire, was scarcely capable of 
understanding the stern and rugged grandeur of O'Connell' s 
character. 6 



6 An account of Montalembert's visit to Darrynane will be found in 
Mrs Oliphant's " Life of Montalembert," vol. i. p. 67. It is to be re- 
gretted that this biography was not written by a Catholic. It is full of 
mistakes and misapprehensions on the subject of religion, and of pre- 
judices against Ireland. The one weak point in Montalembert's cha- 
racter is indeed fairly though tenderly indicated, but the source of this 



1 

M ft 



m 



KM 



In his first letter, written just before the opening of 
Parliament, he said that his motto was " For God and the 
people." He proved it by his fidelity to his faith, not only 
in word?, but in deeds. In the early mornings, summer and 
winter, no matter how late he might have been up on the 
previous night, he was found one of the first at the nearest 
Catholic Church, and at the Sacrifice there offered daily 
he obtained the strength and courage for his great and noble 
work. O'Connell was eminently a practical Catholic. He 
was not deficient in that peculiar sense of perception which 
forms the practical mind ; but a man may be a practical 
Catholic, and yet sadly want the nerve needed for daily 
encounter with opposition from without, and discourage- 
ment within. 

The honest nature of the man came out most amusingly 
in his fourth letter, in which he said that he would apply for 
leave to bring in a bill "to declare that truth was not a libel." 
In a few weeks' time O'Connell became a power in the English 
Parliament, and both Hunt and Brougham were glad to 
avail themselves of his services. When he was attacked, as 
was frequently the case, he generally, managed to leave his 
opponent the doubtful triumph of a name which clung to 
him for life. Lord Leveson Grower was at this time Chief 



weakness is not even hinted. His want of that perfect, entire, child- 
like submission to the Holy See, the very perfection of faith, was the 
note wanting in the harmony of a nnnd which would otherwise have 
been complete. 



•sfi 



LORD LEVESON GOWER. 



■ -i, -» 



Secretary for Ireland. O'Connell had brought the conduct 
of Mr Doherty, in connection with the Doneraile conspiracy, 
before the House. Doherty could not deny the facts, but he 
tried to retaliate on O'Connell by accusing him of speaking 
very differently in Ireland and in Parliament. Lord Leve- 
son Gower defended Doherty, and thereupon brought forth 
from O'Connell one of his often-quoted nicknames : — 

" He has ventured to censure my conduct out of this House ; out 
of this House or in this House, I hold his censure at nought — nor do 
I undervalue it. He has taken upon himself, forsooth, to pronounce 
on my conduct I have a right to retaliate upon him as a public 
man. For his taste, for his judgment, I have no regard ; I rejoice 
that he disapproves of my conduct — I should be sorry he approved 
of it. He is mighty in his own conceit — he is little in mine. If he 
served my country, I would value him. But what has he done % 
What one act of his official life has been useful to Ireland ? Where 
shall I find his services 1 He has condescended to accept the salary 
of an officer amongst us. I take it for granted that he has received 
the emoluments of that office — I do not know how he has earned 
them. He has ornamented by his presence the apartments of Dublin 
Castle. But has he done any act of liberality ? — has he promoted any 
one friend of civil or religious liberty ? — has he, in short, raised him- 
self into importance or consideration by any one act of his adminis- 
tration ? I deny that he has. He is an apprentice in politics, and 
he dares to censure me, a veteran in the warfare of my country. 
His office is a mere apprenticeship. The present Premier was Secre- 
tary in Ireland — the present Secretary of State was Secretary in 
Ireland — so was the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. Their 
juvenile statesmanship was inflicted upon my unhappy country. I 
have heard that barbers train their apprentices by making them shave 
beggars. My wretched country is the scene of his political education 
— he is the shave-beggar of the day for Ireland ! I have now done 



m 

1 










4 



■with the noble Lord. I disregard his praise — I court his censure. 
I cannot express how strongly I repudiate his pretensions to import- 
ance, and I defy him to point out any one act of his administration 
to which my countrymen could look with admiration or gratitude, or 
with any other feelings than those of total disregard. His name 
will serve as a date in the margin of the history of Dublin Castle — 
his memory will sink into contemptuous oblivion." 

It was believed or hoped, after the passing of the Emanci- 
pation Act, that Irelaud would suddenly become prosperous 
and content. The one, indeed, inferred the other, for no 
country can prosper unless it is content, neither can it be 
contented unless it is prosperous. 

Lord Palmerston, who had clearer ideas as to the real 
state of Ireland than any English statesman then living, 
broke forth into an eloquent prophecy of the fate of Ireland, 
with an ardent generosity which did infinite credit to his 
heart, though it showed that his judgment allowed itself to 
be carried away by his feelings. 7 

The Duke of Wellington said, " The House well knew 
that a great majority of its members, as well as a greater 
majority of the other House, had been generally desirous 
of effecting that object [Catholic Emancipation]. It well 



7 " I cannot sit down without expressing the satisfaction I feel, in 
common with the nation at large, at the determination which the Go- 
vernment has at last adopted to give peace to Ireland. The measure 
now before us will open a career of happiness to that country which fur 
centuries it has been forbidden to taste, and to England a prospect of 
commercial prosperity and national strength which has never yet been 
recorded in our annals. The labours of the present session will link 
together two classes of the country which have long been dissevered ; 



II I H TORY REPEATS ITSELF. 



knew that a great majority of the young and growing in- 
tellect of the country had ardently wished for the measure; 
and would any nohle Lord now contend that the Govern- 
ment did not stand on firmer and better ground with 
respect to the Union than if the Catholic question had not 
been carried?" 8 

There was no mere boast, no attempt to prop up a falling 
cause by party exaggeration in this statement. It was a 
matter of fact that a great majority of educated English- 
men, both peers and commoners, were most anxious to 
give Ireland an instalment of the justice long asked and 
long denied, but it was equally true that the result dis- 
appointed or perplexed them according to their various 
dispositions. 

It has been said, until one is almost weary of the 
truism, that history repeats itself. It has been said also 
that history is philosophy teaching by experience. History 
does rep?at itself. We find English statesmen who have 
disestablished the Irish Protestant Church as perplexed 
now why that measure did not produce tranquillity and 



they will form in history the true mark which is to divide the shadow 
of evening twilight from the brilliant effulgence of the rising sun ; 
they will form a memorial, not of the crime or ambition of man, not of 
the misfortunes or revolutions of society, but of the calm and deliberate 
justice of benevolent wisdom watching the good of the human race ; and 
we ought to be proud to be employed on an act which will pass down to 
the latest posterity as an object of the highest gratitude and admira- 
tion." — Life of Lord Palmerston, vol. i. p. 341. 
8 " Courts of William IV. and Victoria," vol. i. p. 94. 



prosperity in Ireland, as English statesmen were why 
Catholic Emancipation did not produce the same results in 
1830. History may be philosophy teaching by experience, 
but the science of political economy is a difficult philosophy, 
because it is rarely studied apart from class prejudice. No 
man takes to the study of the inductive sciences the pre- 
judice which hampers the politician at every turn. 

Men who think at all generally think out their logic. 
Politicians for the most part are guided by circumstances. 
There are not many men who change their political creed 
except for personal advantage ; and such being the fact, it 
follows that there are not many men who have formed a 
political creed as the result of careful and philosophic de- 
duction. 

There were many reasons why Catholic Emancipation was 
not likely to make Ireland either prosperous or contented 
in a week, yet there were men sanguine enough and un- 
reasonable enough to expect it. As well might it be ex- 
pected that a man who had been chained hand and foot 
for years, and fed on such sustenance as would barely 
suffice to sustain life, should become suddenly strong 
vigorous, and grateful the moment his chains were re- 
moved, the moment he had received for the first time aD 
ample supply of food. 

There were circumstances special to the time, and there 
were circumstances special to the passing of the Act itself, 
which combined to frustrate the hopes of those who, from 







ENFORCED BY NECESSITY. 



the highest principles of statesmanship, wished to benefit 
Ireland. We shall first briefly point out the circumstances 
special to the Act itself. 

First, eighteen months' delay in passing the Act injured 
its value and efficacy when granted. The reiterated ask- 
ing and the reiterated refusal had agitated the public 
mind. It could not be expected, after years of effort to 
obtain an act of justice, that those who at last obtained 
it should be very grateful. Furthermore, it was well 
known that this act of justice was granted through 
fear. Under such circumstances it could not be received 
as a grace. That there were men in both Houses who 
gave their vote for Emancipation from the purest motives, 
no one can doubt ; but the people of Ireland could not know 
the opinions or motives of private individuals, and they did 
know a good deal of the ojoinions and motives of public 
characters. 9 It was given grudgingly, unwillingly, and 






-$ 



t 



/f~ ^ 



* Lord Paliuerston wrote, " The Duke is fully resolved to remain 
Minister. . . . He found he could not carry on the government without 
yielding the Catholic question, ami he wisely surrenders that point." In 
another place, he gives a curious illustration of how Ireland was 
governed : " I heard by accident the other day a strong proof how 
wholly the Duke's acquiesence to Catholic relief was a bending to 
necessity, and not a change of opinion ; but it was told me in confidence, 
and do not repeat it. A Catholic gentleman applied to him lately to be 
placed on the Commission of the Peace, but though the man was per- 
fectly respectable and eligible, and a landed proprietor, the Duke re- 
fused him because he was a Catholic." — Life of Lord Palmerston, voL i. 
p. 337. 



PALTRY, BUT SERIOUS. 



% 






ungraciously. The King was not the only person who re- 
solved that the Act should be a dead letter as far as pos- 
sible. 1 And when, at last, some little sign was made to 
show that it possessed vitality, the same pitiful spirit which 
inserted a clause in the Act to oblige O'Connell to contest 
his seat a second time, provided for the appointment of 
silk gowns. Six Catholic gentlemen were named for this 
honour, but O'Connell's name was not amongst the num- 
ber. It was a paltry revenge, but the consequences were 
serious. 

The King slighted O'Connell at his levee more or less 
openly, and there were but too many who followed the 
royal example. The highest possible commendations were 
uttered in Parliament of " the brave and learned youth of 
France," and "the brave and honest working-men of 
1'aris, who did not hesitate to risk their lives when they 
saw that a system of tyranny and taxes was about to be 
fixed for ever on them and on their children." 2 Resistance 
to tyranny in Ireland was described in a different fashion. 

Again, the English Government, having made an act 
of concession to the Catholics, felt bomid to make it as 
little practical as possible, in order to please the Orange- 
men. If the Liberal party had been wise they would have 
coalesced with O'Connell when the Tories went out, but 



- l See note on previous page. 

2 Speech of the Marquis of Blandford in moving an amendment to 
the address. 



they would not coalesce with him, first, because they hated 
him for obtaining Catholic Emancipation ; and secondly, 
because he was Irish. Later, indeed, they were glad to avail 
themselves of his splendid talents ; but, like all gifts to Ire- 
land, the delay proved dangerous. 3 Lord Grey and his 
party made an enemy of O'Connell at the very moment 
when it was above all essential that he should be a 
friend. 

O'Connell was human, a fact which is not unfrequently 
overlooked when he is charged with faults of policy or tem- 
perament. It was only natural that he should feel the 
slights shown him so gratuitously, and he was too keen an 
observer of the political atmosphere not to discern the ab- 
surdity and to despise the weakness which tried to revenge 
itself on him, for being obliged to make this concession . 
to Ireland. O'Connell was a victim to his country in 
more ways than one. 4 

If the Irish were not satisfied with Emancipation, 
nothing would satisfy them. A large party, always ready 
to govern Ireland by force, a convenient method, because 




3 " The old Tory principle of non-concession, till concession lost all 
power and effect, was again persisted in." — Memoirs of Thomas Drum- 
mond, p. 235. 

4 Sir Lytton Bulwer has made some very sensible remarks on Irish 
policy in his " Life of Lord Palmerston," vol. i. p. 340. He says : " Al- 
though the Catholic disabilities were removed, the spirit which had 
established them on the one side, and rescinded them on the other, still 
remained ; and up to this day [1870] there seems a difficulty in per- 
suading those most interested in its welfare, that if you wish to govern 




it saved the trouble of argument, cried out for martial law. 
A smaller party, who had some good feeling and a little 
common sense, asked why was Ireland always discontented, 
but did not wait for a reply. Irish affairs were treated 
very much as a necessary nuisance, to be heard of as sel- 
dom as possible, and when heard of, to be got rid of as fast 
as possible. Every one hoped in his own fashion that 
Ireland would "settle down" into prosperity. No one 
considered how much was yet needed to make Ireland 
prosperous. 

When Emancipation was granted, the English Govern- 
ment assumed that Ireland wanted nothing more; the 
Irish had asked for Emancipation, and nothing more, 
therefore they wanted nothing more. It is difficult now to 
judge how far this was the real sentiment of statesmen, or 
how far it was a convenient excuse for crushing all attempts 
at further legislation. 

In the first place, no Act, however beneficial, could be 
expected to operate instantaneously. In the second place, 
no Act, however good in itself, can supply the place of 
other Acts equally necessary. 6 

Ireland as a statesman, you must not govern it as a sectarian, nor de- 
bate any political question with the predominant idea that you are 
dealing with the Protestant, the Catholic, or the Dissenter. It is this 
external feeling which poisons the Irish atmosphere, and until laws 
shall have changed manners, we must not expect to see any practical 
benefit from laws." 
'- We find a characteristic instance of the ignorance of Ireland, which 

2p 






W/ 

w 

:'J, 



■ 



B 



OA T E SERIOUS SHORTCOMING. 



If an Act could have been passed for the Diffusion of 
Common Sense, and if its embodiments could have been 
carried out, a good deal of trouble would have been saved. 
The Relief Bill gave relief to Catholics, hitherto denied the 
rights of subjects, but it required time before they could 
obtain the benefit of that relief. But the bill did not 
provide profitable employment for thousands who were 
nearly starving, and who could not be expected to rejoice very 
much in the future prospect of political relief while they were 
suffering very hardly from the present pressure of personal 
distress. It might be convenient to embarrass a political 
opponent by pointing to the distressed state of Ireland 
after the passing of the Catholic Relief Bill, and saying 



seems indigenous to some English minds, in Mrs Oliphant's " Life of 
Montalembert.'' She says, " It is sadly and curiously characteristic of 
Ireland, that all the great reforms for which she has agitated have been 
found, immediately after their attainment, to be just what she did not 
want, and to have done little for her." It is certainly wonderful, in this 
nineteenth century, to find a highly-educated Englishwoman so lament- 
ably ignorant of the true state of Ireland. Because the Irish do not 
go into ecstasies of gratitude for each separate act, not of mercy, but of 
simple justice, a certain class of Englishmen consider them ungrateful 
ami dissatisfied. If they are dissatisfied, it is not because one act of 
justice which was done to them was granted, but because other acts of 
justice required to be done, and were refused. 

Montalembert himself was equally ignorant of the state of Ireland 
when he said " that this ' immense event ' [Emancipation] had, after all, 
done but little for Ireland ; the truth being, that all the ridiculous and 
monstrous penalties legally abrogated by that enactment were already 
abrogated in fact." Such ignorance was, however, pardonable in a 
foreigner. 



sip 

i 

W2& 






SI 




tM 



that the Irisli were never satisfied, no matter what was 
done for them, because they were not satisfied uow; but 
such a line of argument showed a singular want of com- 
prehension. The Irish were satisfied that one act of 
justice had been done for them, but they still wanted a 
great deal more. 

The Marquis of Anglesea succeeded the Duke of North- 
umberland in 1830, and in one month issued no less than 
four proclamations against public meetiugs'and Repeal and 
breakfasts. O'Connell was a man who might be couciliated, 
but he was not a man who could be put down. Better a 
thousand times to have allowed him to agitate in his own 
fashion than to exasperate him into open defiance of the 
Government. His public meetings served as a safety-valve 
for excitement, which, driven into other channels, was apt 
to explode in acts of violence. 

Lord Anglesea said he went to Ireland " determined to 
tranquillise the old ascendency.' 1 '' He could not have gone 
with a worse principle. The " old ascendency" were men 
who would not be tranquillised while an Irish Catholic 
remained in the land. They could not, indeed, exterminate 
four million and a half of people, but they could keep 
them in perpetual agitation. The Government, having 
exasperated them by granting Emancipation, now pro- 
ceeded to tranquillise them. Whenever au act of justice 
was done to Catholics, it became necessary at once to offer a 
hecatomb to the offended feelings of Orangemen. Nothing 



r'i 
H 



mi 




MR DOHERTY CHIEF-JUSTICE. 



could have been more absurd, and nothing more unwise. 
The Orangemen took the offering, but it never reconciled 
them to the justice which their fellow-subjects had 
received, and it had the injurious effect of showing that 
party their power, and of arousing the evil spirit which a 
wise Government should have done its utmost to extin- 
guish. 6 

The Marquis of Anglesea's first act certainly did not 
" tranquillise " either party. He made Mr Doherty Chief- 
Justice. This gentleman and O'Connell had had a standing 
feud from the time of the Doneraile conspiracy, and he was 
universally hated by the Catholic party. 

There were also causes peculiar to the times which kept 
up agitation in Ireland. The poverty of the people was 
extreme, and that was a difficulty which no amount of 
Acts of Parliament could remedy at the moment. "When 
English statesmen declared that it was useless to be legis- 
lating for Ireland because she had obtained Emancipation 
and still required coercive Acts, they forgot that starving 
men, in all times and places, had beeu guilty of deeds of 
violence, and that Irishmen at that time were starving. 




6 A writer, by no means partial to Ireland or the Catholics, says, " It 
■was not only the Catholics who were excited, the Protestant fanaticism 
of Ireland was in a blaze. There was a hope of re-establishing the 
ascendency. Earl Roden was rolling into the presence of majesty a 
petition, on great wheels, 4500 feet long, signed by 236,000 men devoted 
to the constitution, and determined to be free." — Life of Mr Drummond, 
p. 237. 





They forgot also that, even while the}' were in the very 
direst distress, they were still obliged to pay tithes to a 
Church which was to them only an engine of oppres- 
sion. 

Disturbances in England were also general at the very 
same period, and from the same cause. There was, how- 
ever, this difference : Irishmen could live contentedly on 
what Englishmen considered barely sufficient to support 
the necessaries of life. Many English noblemen had 
great confidence in Dr Doyle's good sense, and hoped he 
might be able to suggest some measure which might 
trauquillise his native land. But what could he do with a 
starving people, and with a Government which stultified 
itself by offering an embrace with one hand and a blow 
with the other ? He assured one of his noble correspondents 
that the whole of the South of Ireland was indignant at Mr 
Doherty's appointment, as they well might, when he had 
caused the punishment of so many innocent men ; and he 
concluded, " I am tired, my Lord, of appealing to the 
religious feelings of men, who either have no employment, 
or labour during six days for five shillings. Men cannot 
exist in that state, and it is almost a benefit that they 
follow O'Conuell, for, if they did not, they would rob and 
plunder, or destroy property, preferring death by the 
hands of the executioner to death by cold and hunger." 7 



«1 



K 9\ 






h 



PATRIOTISM AND PRUDENCE. 



Such was the condition of the unhappy Irish when England 
expected them to be peaceful and contented. 8 

On the 19th of January 1831, O'Connell was arrested 
in bis own house for holding illegal meetings, but was 
bailed out ; evidently the Government was glad to drop a 
prosecution which should never have been instituted. Cer- 
tainly if he had either intended or wished to excite an in- 
surrection, be could easily have done it then, and he only 
saved the country by his prudence. He had fixed the 31st 
of January as the day of his departure for England. He 



s On the 19th of January 1831, the Duke of "Wellington wrote to the 
Duke of Buckingham on the state of public affairs, and said, " There 
appears a sort of feverish anxiety in every man's mind about public 
affairs. No man can satisfy himself of the safety either of the country or 
of himself." — Courts of William and Victoria, vol. i. p. 188. When such 
was the 6tate of England, it cannot be wondered that Ireland was dis- 
turbed also. Thousands of handbills were circulated in London of a most 
inflammatory character, of which we give specimens. An Irish " Eory 
of the hills " could scarcely have framed more seditious documents. 

" To arms ! to arms ! liberty or death I London meets on Tuesday 
next, an opportunity not to be lost for avenging the wrongs we have 
suffered so long. Come armed, be firm, and victory will be ours ! ! ! 
An Englishman." 

Another ran thus : — 

" Liberty or death ! Englishmen, Britons, and honest men, the time 
has at length arrived. All London meets on Tuesday, Come armed! 
We assure you, from ocular demonstration, that six thousand cutlasses 
had been moved from the Tower for the immediate use of Peel's bloody 
gang. Mark the cursed speech from the throne ! ! These damned police 
are now to be armed. Englishmen, will you put up with this ? " 

There were eight hundred convictions in England for riot and agrarian 
outrages during this year. 



II 






was escorted to the pier at Kingstown by thousands with 
hands and banners, but he took care not to let them know 
that his departure was obliged to be postponed, as he had 
tbat morning received a summons to appear in court per- 
sonally on the following day. If his excited and devoted 
followers had heard this, there would have been blood shed 
in Dublin before night that would not have been easily 
appeased. 

The following letter, written to the Most Rev. Dr MacHale 
at the close of the year 1830, shows how devoted O'Connell 
was to his parliamentary duties, and how much his heart 
was in all that concerned his native land :— 



" London, 2d December 1830. 

"My Lord, — I had the honour of receiving your Lordship's 
letter this day, and feel heartily obliged for its length. I will, of 
course, present any petition you send me, and never think of the 
trouble. In fact, it is none, as I attend the House constantly from 
its sitting to its rising. But as you wish to diversify your favours, 
I would suggest (and which I do only because you require it) 
O'Conor Don, Wise, O'Farrell, and above all, Lord Killeen. 
Browne, also, would cheerfully present some. I think you had 
better confine them to Catholic members. Give me as many of 
them as you please. 

" As to my obtaining co-operation or support from many of my 
countrymen, I must not complain on those heads. I have done 
but little, however much I wish to do for Ireland. I think I may 
venture to hope that wish is sincere. I also hope that the time is 
arriving when more, much more, may be done for our long-oppressed 
country. Your mind is too elevated not to behold as from an 
eminence the events that are passing beneath your view. The signs 



of the times indicate great and mighty changes. The aristocracy 
of the feudal system has been reduced by the superior strength 
and information of the classes styled inferior. The silken and 
sordid aristocracy of the present day are, in my opinion, arrived at 
their last term. A change is taking place even while we write. 
Oh ! for superior spirits to guide and direct its course, to steer the 
mighty ark of human liberty through the boisterous waves of pas- 
sion and turbulence into a haven of calm enjoyment ! 

" I hate this figurative language, and yet I fall into it because it 
is the only applicable phraseology. The moral and political revolu- 
tion is plainly on its march. It is, I may say, self-moving. I am 
as convinced as I am of to-morrow's sun, that within the space of 
probably less than two years, the monopolies of corporations, and 
the still more gigantic oppressions of the Established Church, will 
have passed away for ever. ' The Repeal of the Union * is good 
for everything. It is good as the means of terrifying the enemies 
of the people into every concession practicable under the present 
system. If I were to relax the agitation of that measure, then the 
men in possession of power would enjoy their state in repose, and 
adjourn to the Greek calends all practical improvement. But after 
all, what can they do 1 Nothing, without restoring Ireland to her- 
self. The income accessary from the soil of Ireland and the labour 
of the inhabitants must be spent in Ireland. Conquest and con- 
fiscation had their function in the Union. They were made com- 
plete by that measure, but they have exhausted the vitality of the 
land, and it is no longer able to give sustenance of life to its 
inhabitants. There must be a law to take off the Church burthen. 
An Irish Parliament alone can do (hat. There must be an end 
to absenteeism. An Irish Parliament alone can do that. The cry- 
ing wants of the poor, the increasing indigence of the people, 
demand the restoration of a Parliament which will not only keep at 
home ' the rents,' but diminish their amount by the influence which 
tenants, voters, sharers in a free government, neighbours, friends 
from kindness received, enemies from oppression practised, must 



"7 




necessarily Lave over the landlord who resides within their view, 
and can hear with his own ears their curses on hardheartedness, or 
receive their blessings for generosity. Tiie machine of the state 
would break to pieces unless we consolidate it by a domestic legis- 
lation, and thus preserve the kingdom of Ireland for the king's Wi 
crown, and the connection for the benefit of both countries. Let 
me then respectfully urge the adding petitions for 'the repeal' to 
those your Lordship mentions. To you in fact, as well as in name, 
they would be productive of some utility. I shall support this Ad- 
ministration as long as they observe their promise ; but, of course, I 
scorn their offers of place or promotion for myself. 

"I fear I have taken unwarrantable revenge on your Lordship in 
point of length of epistle, but no length of writing could adequately 
express the sincerity of that respect and regard with which I have 
the honour to be, my Lord, your Lordship's most respectful and 
faithful servant, w®w 

" Daniel O'Connell. 

" Right Rev. Dr MacHale." 

During the year 1832, O'Connell had a sharp controversy 
with Dr Doyle on the poor-laws. In the same year the 
tithe agitation was at its height. The people were shot 
clown like dogs hy the police, often headed hy a Protestant 
clergymen ; and the people in return inflicted on the tithe 
collectors the most horrible cruelties. Rathcormac was the BM/ 

scene of one most horrible massacre of the unfortunate 
peasantry. The military and police were headed by the 
magistrates, one of them a clergyman. They fired so close 
that the muzzles of their guns almost touched their victims. 
At a place called Hervey, the people assembled in thousands 
to resist the payment of tithes, and had a regular encounter 
with the military, whom they overjjowered by numbers. 



TRIAL OF THE RIOTERS. 




For this resistance, twenty-five men were sent to Kilkenny 
for trial by special commission, and O'Connell was retained 
for the defence. The principal evidence against the firs! 
man who was put up for trial was that of a policeman who 
had escaped from the scene of slaughter. His testimony 
could not be shaken, and O'Connell was about to send 
him down in despair, when his attorney handed him a piece 
of paper. It contained these words : " The witness's father 
was a sheep-stealer. 

O'Connell went on with his cross-examination, much 
to the surprise of the attorney, without taking any notice 
of the circumstance. Just as the witness was about 
to escape, as he hoped, finally, O'Connell called him 
back. 

" Are you fond of mutton ? " 

" I like a good piece well enough," replied the unsus- 
picious witness. 

" Did you ever know any expert sheep-stealers ? " 

The witness coloured crimson, but replied quietly, " I 
have met with a few in the discharge of my duty as a 
policeman." 

" Just so ; only in the discharge of your duty ? Did you 
ever know a sheep-stealer before you entered the police ? " 

" Never," replied the witness. 

O'Connell put the question again mildly, and received 
the same reply, and then, in tones of thunder, charged at 
the unhappy man, and obliged him to admit the truth, and 




y z 



\ 

I 



" SPA XKIXG MAJOR I TIES." 



to admit himself a perjurer. Au alibi was proved for the 
prisoner, and he was acquitted. 

In the year 1833, O'Connell took his full share in the 
debates on the Coercion Bill. Peel quoted stock anec- 
dotes about the barbarity of the Irish, and the necessity for 
" putting them down." O'Couuell admitted that there 
had been outrages, but he showed that the fault of these 
outrages lay at the door of those " who gave the peasants 
stones for bread, and martial law for justice." 9 

O'Connell had some of the greatest men of that or any 
other day against him ; and even his worst enemies were 
obliged to admit that the Irish agitator was equal to most 
of them, and surpassed many. He had to answer Stanley, 
Macaulay, Brougham, and Peel. The bill passed, never- 
theless, by a " spanking " majority, to the great satisfac- 
tion of many members of both Houses, some of whom at 
least believed coercive Acts the best mode of governing 
Ireland. 



* The first reading, March 5, was carried after a debate of five nights, 
by 466 to 89 ; the third reading, on March 29, by 345 to 86. Lord 
Palmerston said, " You see by what spanking majorities this reformed 
House of Commons is passing the most violent bill ever carried into 
law, which contains in one Act the Insurrection Act, the suspension of 
the Habeas Corpus, and martial law. It is a read tour de force, but 
then it is to be followed by remedial measures ; and there is this differ- 
ence between us and Metternich or the Pope, — we coerce as they did, but 
we redress grievances, as they do not." It does not seem to have oc- 
curred to Lord Palmerston that it would have been wiser to have pre- 
vented the grievances. 



;S. 



in 




O'Connell had now the assistance of his "household 
brigade," his two sons-in-law and his three sons having 
seats in the first reformed Parliament. 

" Even at this early 'stage of the session," observes Mr John 
O'Connell, " there was earnest given of the hostile spirit towards 
Ireland which was to work its ruin. The only part of the speeches 
of William IV. which his infirmities or his inclinations allowed him 
to deliver with any distinctness was that in which he threatened 
Ireland ; and even this agreeable topic did not give more dignity to 
his demeanour than that of a good scold." 1 

O'Connell, certainly, did not scold — he thundered. At 
the close of one of his speeches, during this session, he 
exclaimed, addressing the Whigs, "You have brains of 
lead, hearts of stone, and fangs of iron." The famous 
Fergus O'Conncr was in the House at this time also. He 
got a seat in Cork, in connection with the obtaining 
of which some amusing reminiscences are recorded by 
Mr John O'Connell. He was an impetuous man, without 
sufficient steadiness of purpose or breadth of mind to carry 
out a plan of parliamentary agitation. Nevertheless, he 
was extremely desirous to be a leader, and gave O'Connell 



1 "Recollections of a Parliamentary Career," vol. i. p. 9. Fergus 
O'Connor and O'Neil Daunt were elected about the same time ; the 
former had no money, but he contrived to steal a march on the opposing 
candidate. It was considered necessary he should be "invited" to 
stand for the county, and he was invited. His supporters gave him a 
dinner, but to his extreme dismay a bill was sent to him afterwards for 
the whole cost of the entertainment. 





some trouble by trying to press on the Repeal movement 
during this session. 

By way of compensation for the Coercion Bill, the 
Church-cess imposition was taken off in Ireland, and Irish 
Catholics were no longer compelled to pay for the repairs 
and maintenance of Protestant Churches. At the same 
time, ten Irish bishoprics were abolished by the Church 
Temporalities Act, 

It was during this year, also, that O'Connell had his 
famous quarrel with the London reporters, and, as usual, 
came out victor. He complained that they misreported 
bis speeches. They retorted by refusing to report them at 
all. O'Connell retaliated by calling the attention of the 
Speaker to the " strangers " in the gallery, and clearing 
them out of the House. The reporters capitulated, and 
reported O'Connell correctly to keep their places without 
molestation. 

At the close of the year 1833, an attempt seems to have 
been made to divide the Irish party by calumny. It was 
announced by the member for Hull that an Irish member 
had voted against the Coercion Act, who strongly urged it 
in private, and declared to the Ministry that "no man could 
live in Ireland" unless it was passed. The question arose, 
"Who was the traitor?" The member for Hull, being 
sorely pressed, agreed that he would say, Yes or No, if 
asked privately by each of the suspected'persons. This was 
done, and it appeared that Shiel was the guilty individual. 



I 

M 



iff 






,A 



pi 



606 LORD A L THORPE AND SHIEL. 

O'Connell asked Lord Altliorpe in the House if the charge 
was true, and to name the person. Lord Althorpe evaded 
the question by saying that he believed more than one 
Irish member who voted against the Coercion Act spoke 
favourably of it in private. 

There were cries of " Name," " Name." The Irish 
members started to their feet, and demanded, both indi- 
vidually and collectively, "Was it I?" Shiel made a 
special inquiry, and Lord Althorpe admitted he was one 
of the persons. The result was a hostile message, after 
Shiel had most solemnly denied the imputation in the 
House. The House interposed, and gave both parties into 
custody; but eventually a committee investigated the matter, 
and it was proved that the whole affair was a fabrication. 

On the 23rd of April 1834, O'Connell brought forward 
his motion for Repeal of the Union. He was compelled to 
do this against his own judgment, being fully aware 
that the time for passing so important a measure had not 
yet come. As he walked down to the House from his 
residence in Laugham Place, he paused a moment at a 
point where Westminster Abbey became visible, and ex- 
claimed, " The Lord Almighty be merciful to your soul, 
Henry the Seventh, who left us so magnificent a monument 
of your piety. You left provision at your decease to have 
perpetual masses offered up for your soul ; but from the 
time that ever-execrable brute Henry the Eighth seized 
on the revenues of the Church, and of course laid hands on 







M 



THE OLD CATHOLIC CATHEDRALS. 607 

that endowment with the rest, perhaps no human being 
recollected to aspirate the words ' The Lord have mercy on 
your soul,' until it struck the humble person who now offers 
that prayer with the utmost sincerity." 

O'Connell frequently expressed a wish that he might 
live to see mass offered up in Westminster Abbey. The 
tide of conversions from Protestantism which had then set 
in excited hopes which were not realised. The earnestness 
of his own character, and his deeply religious sentiments, 
gave him a deep iuterest in the converts, whom he used to 
meet frequently in London at a later period. Having 
suffered for the faith themselves, and knowing something of 
the reality of persecution, they sympathised with Ireland 
more deeply than it could be sympathised with by those 
who had no practical. experience of such trials. 

" O'Connell," observes Mr Daunt, " was an enthusiastic admirer 
of the ancient cathedrals of England. In that of Canterbury he 
took a peculiar interest, as it was the scene of the martyrdom of 
St Thomas a Becket ; an occurrence which he employed Mr Alfred 
Elmore to commemorate in the spirited picture which hangs in the 
church of St Andrew, Westland Kow, Dublin. O'Connell said, ' I 
have presented this picture to the church, in the hope that the sight 
of it may put other people in mind to follow my example.' 

"There was a slight incident connected with his visit to Canter- 
bury Cathedral, which he took pleasure in frequently recording. 
' While walking through the noble old Catholic pile,' said he, ' I 
chanced to remark to my daughter, who accompanied me, that it 
was not a little singular that not one Protestant prelate had ever 
been interred within its walls. This remark was overheard by the 
female guide who shows the Cathedral to visitors. She listened 



hi 



m 



fl 



attentively, and after some apparent hesitation, said, " May I take 
the liberty, sir, of asking a question 1 " " Certainly," said I. 
" Then may I make so bold as to ask, if all those Archbishops were 
Papists.?" "Every one of them, madam," said I. "Bless me !" 
cried the woman, in astonishment, " I never knew that before." 
I then described the effect of the high altar lighted up for the cele- 
bration of mass in Catholic times ; when the great aisle, now boxed 
up into compartments by the organ loft, stretched its venerable 
and unbroken length from the altar to the portal, thronged with 
kneeling worshippers. The picture delighted the woman. " Oh ! " 
cried she, clapping her hands, " I should like to see that I " " God 
grant you may," returned I.' 

" Then he would sometimes add — 'And He may yet grant it- 
England is steadily and gradually returning to the Catholic faith.' 

"Comparing the cathedrals of Catholic times with those erected 
since the Reformation, he observed, ' Westminster Abbey and St 
Paul's afford us good specimens of this sort of contrast : the very 
architecture of the former seems to breathe the aspiring sentiment 
of Christianity ; but St Paul's~it is a noble temple, to be sure ; 
but as for any peculiarity of Christian character about it, it might 
just as well be a temple to Neptune ! ' " 

O'Connell's Repeal motion was opposed by Mr Spring 
Rice, who was well supplied with facts and fictions for 
the occasion. The motion was, of course, lost ; and it is 
said that O'Connell's speech was by no means equal to 
his usual efforts, because he did not anticipate success. 2 
Lord Grey's administration was not of long continuance ; 



* Mr Daunt says : — " O'Connell told me he was forced to take this 
step, bitterly against his will. ' I felt,' said he, ' like a man who was 
going to jump into a cold bath, but I was obliged to take the plunge.' 
His speech was certainly an able one, but very inferior to the masterly 




LETTERS TO DR MAC RALE. 



he was succeeded by Lord Melbourne. O'Connell's private 
opinions will be best seen in the following letter to his 
Grace the Archbishop of Tuam : — 

"London, lid March 1834. 
" My ever-respected Lord, — I had the honour of receiving a 
letter from you some time ago promising a Repeal petition, and I 
wish to say that the petition has not come to hands. I regret to he 
ohliged to add, that the number of Repeal petitions does not at all 
correspond with my hopes and expectations. I am the more sorry 
for this, because / have the most intimate conviction that nothing of 
value can possibly be done for Ireland until we have a domestic 
Parliament. The faction, which in all its ramifications, bears so 
severely on our people and our country, can never be rendered 
innoxious whilst they can cling, even in idea, to support from the 
Government of this country. It is a subject of serious but melan- 
choly speculation to reflect upon, the innate spirit of hatred of 
everything Irish which seems to be the animating principle of their 
existence. You certainly have two distinct specimens of the worth- 
lessness of that existence in your county members. Two such 
' lubbers,' as the seamen would call them, two such ' bustoons,' 
as we in Munster would denominate them, never yet figured on any 
stage, public or private. One of the best of your Lordship's good 
works will be assisting to muster such a combination of electoral 
force in your county as will ensure the rejection of both at the next 
practical opportunity. I should be tempted to despair of Ireland if 
I could doubt of your success. 

"I read with deep and painful interest your published letters to 

oration in which he introduced the same question to the Dublin cor- 
poration in 1843. 

" Notwithstanding the obstacles thrown by the Coercion Act in the 
way of petitions to the Legislature, O'Connell was backed, on this occa- 
sion, by more than half a million of signatures to petitions in favour of 
Repeal."— Personal Recollections, vol. i. p. 18. 

2q 



LETTERS TO DR MAC HALE. 



Lord Grey. What a scene of tyranny and heartless oppression on 
the one hand ! what a frightful view of wretchedness and misery on 
the other ! A man is neither a human being nor a Christian who 
does not devote all his energies to find a remedy for such grievances. 
But that remedy is not to be found in a British Parliament. 

" You will see by the papers that the Protestant Dissenters in this 
country are storming that citadel of intolerance and pride — the 
Established Church. The effect of such an attack can operate only 
for good in Ireland. This was the stronghold of the Irish Estab- 
lishment ; as long as they had England at their back, they could 
laugh to scorn all attempts in Ireland to curb them ; but I believe, 
firmly believe, their days are numbered, and hope that we shall see, 
but certainly not weep. 

" I have the honour to be, my Lord, most respectfully, your most 
obedient servant, "Daniel O'Con.nell. 

" Eight Rev. Dr MacHale." 

"Merrion Square, 10(A December 1834. 

" My revered Lord, — There have been many letters of con- 
gratulation addressed to your Grace, but none, I will venture to 
say, so cordial as mine ; because I not only congratulate you as a 
gentleman whom even as a private individual I highly respect, but 
congratulate you in the name of Ireland, and for her sake ; and above 
all, for the sake of that faith whose sacred deposit has been preserved 
by your predecessors, and will be preserved unblemished, and indeed 
with increased lustre, by your Grace. 

" Indeed, I venture to hope that there are times coming when 
the period of the oppression of the Church in Ireland, destined by 
God in His adorable dispensations to arrive — will have arrived. 
I do, I confess, venture to augur favourably from your nomination 
by his Holiness the Pope — you who had proved yourself too 
honest an Irishman not to be obnoxious to the British Administra- 
tion. It seems to me to be the brilliant dawn of a noonday in 
which the light of Home will no longer be obscured by the clouds 
of English influence. I often sighed at the delusion created in the 



O'COJYJfELL'S INFLUENCE IN THE HOUSE. 611 



political circles at Rome on the subject of the English Government. 
They thought— good souls— that England favoured the Catholics, 
when she only yielded to our claims— not knowing that the secret 
animosity to Catholicity was as envenomed as ever it was. 

" The present Pope— may God protect his Holiness— has seen 
through that delusion, and you are a proof that it will no longer be 
a cause of misconception to be as true to the political interests as 
to the spiritual wants of the people of Ireland. I am delimited at 
this new era. No man can be more devoted to the spiritual autho- 
. rity of his Holiness. I have always detested what were called the 
liberties of the 'Church in France.' 

" I am convinced that the more direct and unequivocal is that 
authority according to the canons, the more easy will it be to pre- 
serve the unity of the faith. 

" I need not add, that there does not live a human being more 
submissive— in omnibus— to the Church than I am, from the most 
unchangeable conviction. I have only to add, that if your Grace 
could have any occasion for any exertions of mine in support of any 
candidate in any county in Connaught, I shall have the greatest 
pleasure in receiving your suggestions as cherished commands. 

I have the honour to be, with profound respect, my Lord, of your 
Grace, the most obedient faithful servant, 

" Daniel O'Connell. 
" Most Rev. Dr MacHale, &c." 

The immense power which O'Connell wielded at this 
period in the English Parliament, and how his least word 
or act was carefully weighed by English statesmen, is evi- 
dent from the recently-published Memoirs and Correspond* 
ence of LordJMherton^ Those persons who, from ignor- 
ance or "educational prejudices, have looked on O'Connell 
as a mere agitator, will do well to peruse this work. No 
mere agitator could have obtained such influence or exer- 



cised such power ; no brawling demagogue could oblige a 
powerful party in the State to consider his influence first 
in almost every step they took. 3 

In 1835, when Lord Melbourne had formed a Cabinet, 
Lord Alvanley asked if he had not the " powerful aid" of 
O'Connell and his party ? Lord Brougham interfered to put 
aside such an inconvenient interrogatory; but the Premier 
was obliged to defend himself by a denial. An angry 
scene ensued. Lord Londonderry congratulated Lord Mel- 
bourne, and said he was glad to hear that he had repudiated 
O'Connell and his Radical crew, as he was sure that any 
ministerial connection with him or his tail would be the 
curse of the country. A few nights after Colonel Sibthorp 
hoped the House would have a safe and speedy riddance 
of the band. O'Connell replied with interest to each of 



3 The following extracts from the correspondence will show this : — Lord 
Hatherton wrote to Lord Wellesley, " Under sueh circumstances, a com- 
plete union in the House of Commons between the Government and the 
great mass of the Irish members is of the first importance." In order 
to effect this union, O'Connell was courted and deceived. Again he 
writes, " In the course of the day, O'Connell came to the Irish Office. 
I cautioned him against any unnecessary excitation of the people in Ire- 
land until he should have seen the new Coercion Bill, which would be 
renewed, but with certain limitations. He thanked me, and promised 
to consider my communication as strictly private and confidential." 
And so he did, until he found how he had been deceived ; perhaps not 
with full intention, but certainly he was deceived. 

O'Connell appears to have had his doubts, however ; for Lord Hather- 
ton, in writing to the Lord-Lieutenant, says, " On O'Connell expressing 
some doubt whether others in the Cabinet would not overrule the 
opinions of the Lord-Lieutenant and myself," &c— P. 53. 





DISRAELI COURTING O'CONNELL. 



his honourable opponents ; and as Colonel Sibthorp pos- 
sessed an extraordinary amount of hirsute appendages, 
he said "he would not abate him a single hair in point 
of good humour." 

O'Connell at times allowed himself to use unjustifiable 
language in public. He stigmatised Lord Alvanley as a 
"bloated buffoon." Lord Alvanley challenged him first, 
and then tried to get him expelled from Brooke's Club. 
The Club refused to expel O'Connell, and Mr Morgan 
O'Connell took up the challenge, and met Lord Alvanley 
in Regent's Park, without any serious consequence to either. 
Soon after this occurrence, Mr Disraeli attacked O'Connell 
at Taunton. This versatile statesman had changed his 
politics rather suddenly. When the borough of Wickham 
became vacant in 1831, he wrote to O'Connell soliciting 
his interest, and a, commendatory letter from him. It cer- 
tainly is a curious phase of political history to know 
that the author of " Lothair " courted the Irish Catholic 
agitator. Mr Disraeli had O'Conuell's letter printed, and 
placarded through the borough, and O'Connell not un- 
naturally complained of this attack on him after he had 
done Mr Disraeli " a civility, if not a service." * 



O'Connell's attack on the great Conservative leader was certainly 
very severe :— « How is he now engaged ? Why, in abusing the 
Rascals and eulogising the King and the Church like a true Conser- 
vative. At Taunton this miscreant had the audacity to style me an 
incendiary. Why, I was a greater incendiary in 1831 than I am at 
present, if I ever were one ; and if I am, he is doubly so for having 






614 O'COXXELL'S ATTACK ON DISRAELI. 



Disraeli demanded satisfaction from Morgan O'Connell, 
who " had taken on himself the vicarious duty of yield- 
ing satisfaction for the insults which his father had too 
long lavished on his political opponents." Morgan 0' Con- 
employed me. Then he calls me a traitor. My answer to that is — He 
is a liar ! He is a liar in action and in words. His life is a living lie. 
He is a disgrace to his species. What state of society must that be that 
could tolerate such a creature — having the audacity to come forward 
with one set of principles at one time, and obtain political assistance by 
reason of those principles, and at another to profess directly the reverse? 
His life, I say, is a living lie. He is the most degraded of his species 
and kind ; and England is degraded in tolerating or having upon the 
face of her society, a miscreant of his abominable, foul, and atrocious 
nature. . . . He is Conservatism personified. His name shows that 
he is by descent a Jew. His father became a convert. He is the better 
for that in this world, and I hope, of course, he will be the better for it 
in the next. There is a habit of underrating that great and oppressed 
nation — the Jews. They are cruelly persecuted by persons calling them- 
selves Christians — but no person ever yet was a Christian who persecuted. 
The cruelest persecution they suffer is upon their character, by the foul 
names which their calumniators bestowed upon them before they carried 
their atrocities into effect. They feel the persecution of calumny severer 
upon them than the persecution of actual force and the tyranny of actual 
torture. I have the happiness to be acquainted with some Jewish fami- 
lies in London, and amongst them more accomplished ladies, or more 
humane, cordial, high-minded, or better educated gentlemen, 1 have 
never met. It will not be supposed, therefore, that when I speak of 
Disraeli as the descendant of a Jew, that I mean to tarnish him on that 
account. They were once the chosen people of God. There were mis- 
creants amongst them, however, also ; and it must have certainly been 
from one of those that Disraeli descended. He possesses j ust the quali- 
ties of the impenitent thief who died upon the cross — whose name, I 
verily believe, must have been Disraeli. For aught I know, the present 
Disraeli is descended from him, and with the impression that he is, I 
now forgive the heir-at-law of the blasphemous thief who died upon the 



U 



m 



" IN EX TIN G OISHA BLE HA TRED.' 



nell denied his right. Disraeli wrote a public letter, which 
he hoped would bring some one out ; and on the 6th of May 
1835, he wrote again to Morgan O'Connell, " Now, sir, it 
is rny hope that I have insulted him ; assuredly it was my 
intention to do so ; and I fervently pray that you or bome 
one of his blood may attempt to avenge the inextinguish- 
able hatred with which I shall pursue his existence." 
Morgan O'Connell still declined to fight, and the " inex- 
tinguishable hatred," though unavenged, did not do 
O'Connell any particular harm. 

In the year 1835, O'Connell was actively engaged in 
superintending arrangements for Irish elections, and suc- 
ceeded in getting Carlow out of the hands of the Bruen 
family, who had long believed in a hereditary right to 
return whom they pleased. The following letters to Dr 
MacHale are evidences of his energy and earnestness : — ■ 
" Committee Room, 15th January 1£35. 

" My evek dear Lord, — We are now getting on well. I begin 
to believe that I will beat them here. But Vigors loses Carlow 
— honest, independent Vigors ! He has money enough for your 
legitimate purposes, and I wrote to recommend him as the second 
man for Mayo, should I not want it myself. I will write to your 
Grace again to-morrow. I will then know the best or the worst. 
Wuterford city turns out the Conservative, and returns Wise and 
Bannor. 

" I have the honour to be, with profound respect of your Grace, 
the devoted servant, Daniel O'Connell. 



"Most Rev. Dr MacHale, 

" Catholic Archbishop, Tuam." 



" Merrion Square, Dublin, January 17, 1835. 

" My ever respected Lord, — You will, I know, be glad to see 
my frank. Blessed be God, all is at last well here. I find from the 
papers that Hume is in danger in Middlesex. What a glorious 
opportunity if we could return him for Mayo with Brabazon. I 
would guarantee the payment of £1000 if he were certainly returned 
— that is, I have no more doubt of that money than I have of my 
existence. Pardon me for obtruding on your Grace at this moment, 
but it would be a high honour to Ireland to have such a represen- 
tative. I write in haste and some confusion, but the fact is that 
time presses. 

" I am compelled to go to Meath to my son Morgan, and thence 
unhappily to Kerry. 

" Ever and always with the most profound respect and admiration 
of your Grace, the most devoted faithful servant, 

" Daniel O'Connell. 

" Most Rev. Dr MacHale. 

" P.S. — I am sure Vigors would prefer your returning." 

In May, Mr Raphael, a Catholic gentleman, was returned, 
through O'Connell's influence, for Carlow ; but he refused 
to pay part of his election expenses, and involved O'Con- 
nell in endless trouble ; indeed, he said, " I had more 
trouble with him than I ever had with any man." A Par- 
liamentary Committee, however, decided that the Liberator 
was entirely free from blame. 

In January 1836, O'Connell was entertained at public 
banquets both in Liverpool and Brighton, where the Irish 
element was beginning to feel its power and assert itself. 

During the years 1836 and 1837, the Irish Corporation 
Reform Bill was a source of constant dispute between the 



m 



i 






1 



two Houses. Lord Londonderry declared that " O'Con- 
nell was more dictatorial and impudent than ever." He 
was no less complimentary to his compeers, " whom he 
called a snivelling, yelling part of a pack without a 
huntsman." 6 

A good deal of recrimination went on in both Houses, 
and English members proved themselves quite as great 
adepts at conveying imputations, and using unparlia- 
mentary, if not ungentlemanly, language as any Irish 
member. 

It was at this period, also, that Lord Lyndhnrst's cele- 
brated attack on the Irish brought forth from Shiel one of his 
finest speeches, already mentioned. Lord Lyndhurst pos- 
sibly scarcely meant all he said, but he was embittered by 
party feeling, and the words have remained ever since as a 
painful evidence of unhappy and ignorant intolerance. "It 
seems, my Lords," he exclaimed, " that we Protestant 
Englishmen are to be governed by those who are aliens in 
blood, in language, and in religion." This attack on 
Ireland came with a singularly bad grace from a man 
who was himself of Irish descent, and of very humble 
parentage; but such persons are generally the first to vilify 
their country or their religion when placed in a position of 
eminence. 6 

6 " Courts of William IV. and Victoria," vol. ii. p. 229. 
8 Lord Campbell admits " that he could not trace the line of the 
Copleys farther back than the Chancellor's grandfather," and that he 



I 






THE BANQUET AT TUAM. 



In January 1836, O'Connell was entertained at a ban- 
quet in Tuam. The speeches made on that occasion are 
all before us, but it would be impossible to give more than 
a few brief extracts. 

The Liberator pronounced an enthusiastic panegyric on 
Mr Bodkin, and " hoped Gal way would long be represented 
by so truly honourable a gentleman ; " but he surpassed his 
usual warmth in proposing the health of the illustrious 
Archbishop of Tuam, a prelate who added lustre to the 
hierarchy, not only by his piety but also by his learning. 
The toast was received with enthusiastic applause, and the 
reply of the Archbishop was in itself a sufficient proof of 
the correctness of 0' Council's eulogium. 

As for many reasons his speech cannot fail to be 
perused with interest at the present day, we append it with 
but few omissions : — 

"I accept of the compliment as a recognition of that apostolical 
source from which my office is derived. Let others enjoy the 
feathers of temporal titles, as well as the more weighty and valu- 
able considerations of temporal wealth, as long as they are left them 
by the good-will of the power that gave them. I, whether of 
Maronia, or of Killala, or of Tuam, never set any value on those 
names, but as far as they are authentic monuments of spiritual and 






" married in Ireland." — Lives of Lord Lyndhurst and Brougham, 

P . a 

Sir John Copley's grandfather rose to distinction through his artistic 
skill. He was born in America immediately after the arrival of his 
Irish parents in that country. Lord Lyndhurst is not the only Irishman 
who has sought to be more English than the English. 



c> 



it ' « 



SPEECH OF DR MAC HALE. 



untitled inheritance, which it is not within the compass of any power 
on earth to take away. Do not imagine that I look upon the toast 
as a mere compliment, suggested either by my presence, or that of 
the venerable bishop by my side. No ; I regard it as a continuous 
evidence of that habitual, deep, and heartfelt reverence which the 
laity of Ireland uniformly exhibit towards their clergy, and which 
it is unnecessary to assure them has a sincere reciprocal return in 
the paternal attachment of their pastors. In this mutual affection 
have the faithful and the priesthood of Ireland found the richest 
sources of their solace in the bitterest period of their woe ; and 
from this continuance shall they draw their sweetest consolation in 
the coming days of their prosperity. Were it otherwise, it would be 
a fatal day for the happiness of Ireland. Then might our enemies 
with some reason raise the shout of triumph. Then might they 
indulge the anticipation that the series of our disasters was not 
closed — nay, that they might upset, in a few years, that magnificent 
fabric of the nation's freedom which it cost our illustrious guest such 
toils and perils and anxieties of six-and- thirty years to rear. 
Thank God, however, that the merits and service of such a man are 
not left for posthumous appreciation. It has been the reproach of 
many countries and many periods not unfruitful in virtue, that they 
abandoned their benefactors to the praises of posterity. It is no 
unfavourable presumption in favour of our own times, that we can 
estimate living worth ; and never was there such evidence of 
talent and integrity, for, during a period unexampled in the 
annals of any powerful or popular man, his fame, instead of suffer- 
ing any eclipse, has brightened, day after day, unto a fuller and 
more permanent effulgence. Witness his triumphs. Shall I touch 
on the Catholic Association ? No; hindered as I am — the luminous 
records of his own pen, like those who, when they attempt to pursue 
the conqueror of Gaul through the career of his triumphs, are de- 
terred from the task by the charm of his own commentaries. Ireland 
is too full of the recollection of his services to require their enumera- 
tion, and the pillars of light he has left behind him sufficiently point 




out to every eye the path which he has traversed. But I shall 
allude to his recent and triumphant career through the sister 
country, as productive, I trust, of advantages as it has been of 
universal admiration. What a singular spectacle, to see the inhabit- 
ant of a land, whose lot was lately identified with servitude, wel- 
comed as the most efficient living champion of freedom ! The 
professor of a religion that was hitherto calumniated as persecuting 
hailed by those of another as the unrivalled advocate of the most 
enlightened and Christian toleration ! To see England forget its 
ancient hostility to our country, and Scotland relaxing beneath his 
spell the puritanical stiffness of its creed ! To see the generous 
people, wherever he went, thronging round him, confessing their 
former errors, and laying their bigotry and their prejudices as a 
homage at his feet ! Behold, even this day, what a scene we wit- 
nessed, surrounded by myriads whose ranks were so compact and 
dense (such was their affectionate rudeness), that it required almost 
as much force to penetrate through them as if you were opening a 
way through a solid mass. The Tories wonder how he possesses 
the charm of stealing away the hearts of people. You might as well 
expect that the trees of the forest should not wave their heads when 
agitated by the wind of heaven, as that any mass of human beings 
should not be s-tirred to homage when touched by the soul-stirring 
breath of his eloquence. As you have associated my name with the 
hierarchy, I think there cannot be better proofs of the value and 
importance of that body than the abuse that is heaped on them by 
a calumniating press. Among the others, need I refer you to the 
unchristian attacks upon our body, which were falsely attributed 
• to a certain dignitary of the Establishment. He disavowed to a 
portion of those charges, and flung the rest to be indiscriminately 
borne by three thousand of the Irish priesthood. It was not to be 
repelled as when confined to twenty-seven bishops. He, however, 
did not hesitate to own that some of his allusions were so pointed 
as that the individual for whom they were meant could not possibly 
be mistaken. He disliked, it seems, any polemical public corres- 







pondence. I Lave no doubt of it — lie himself best knows the reason. 
The individual to whom he alluded — in order that 1 may avoid the 
repetition of that letter ' /,' which must be offensive — has other 
occupations besides obtruding on his Lordship any unwelcome con- 
troversy. But from what sources do these serious charges against 
the Catholic clergy come 1 Is it from a portion of the press dis- 
tinguished for the correctness of its moral sentiments or the beauty 
of its language 1 If the taste of any people be estimated by the 
character of the literature which ministers to their instruction and 
amusement, we may judge how exalted is the standard of Tory 
refinement from the style and sentiments of the public journals 
which are devoted to their support. Such language would be in- 
tolerable in any circle having the least pretensions to decency, and 
some of the sentiments would be deemed to be savage in a state of 
barbarism. As for our calumnies, no character however blameless, 
or profession however sacred, are beyond the reach of their abuse. 
Need I allude to the gross attacks upon our clergy and hierarchy. 
And from that hierarchy they have singled out one whose retiring 
habits should have protected him from their assaults. Nay, they 
have assailed him with the same virulence as if conscious that the 
meek disposition which kept him aloof from all political strife 
would render him more sensitive to the shafts of their unprovoked 
and gratuitous rancour. And what was his crime? Merely that 
he did not submit to the calumnious imputations of the horrid 
opinions that were falsely attributed to his Church, and that, from 
the nobleness of soul which shrinks from the imputation of guilt, he 
repelled the change and made it recoil upon his enemies. And for 
this, which should have been an honour, they revile a man whose 
varied acquirements could adorn a court, and whose unostentatious 
evangelical virtues would not have been unworthy of the brightest 
epoch of the cloisters. As to the attacks upon the priesthood of 
Ireland, they are too well employed to return railing for railing, or 
to waste their time with those Churchmen who have nothing else to 
do, in repelling charges which would be repeated the day after 





SPEECH OF DR MAC HALE. 



refutation. I tell those people, in the name of the calumniated 
priesthood of Ireland, that, instead of covering them with re- 
proaches, they ought to be grateful for their services. If they 
preach the doctrines that are imputed to them, are there not 
hearers enough to bear testimony ? 

" The portals of our churches are open to the world ; the public 
ways are filled on Sundays with the multitudes that go forth after 
hearing the instructions of their pastors. We speak publicly before 
the world, and in secret we say nothing ; and yet there is no evi- 
dence of those foul charges. The truth is, those who advanced 
those charges know little of the nature of our ministry. It is a 
ministry of peace, not of strife — of charity, not of discord. The 
priest on the altar is fully impressed with the awful nature of the 
mysteries he celebrates, and feels that the accents of vengeance 
would be ill-suited to the tongue that had just been purpled with 
the sacrifice of reconciliation. Instead, then, of enmity, they preach 
forgiveness ; and the person who comes breathing the revenge to 
which nature would prompt him, returns with far different feelings; 
and the widow who was left childless goes home, invoking, like the 
first martyrs, the mercies of Heaven on the heads of those who be- 
reave her of that staff which was given her to sustain the tottering 
footsteps of old age." T 

In the early part of the year 1836, we find O'Connell 
again in active correspondence with the Archbishoj) of 
Tuam on the subject of elections, as the following letters 
will show : — 

"Darbynane Abbet, llh January 1836. 

" My ever-respected Lord, — I had the honour of receiving the 
letter of your Grace, dated the 4th, this evening. Yesterday I got 

7 This allusion to the cruelties consequent on the exaction of tithes is 
one which can be verified by a reference to the evidence given before 
Parliamentary Committees on this subject. 



m 









the Galway invitation, and, of course, accepted it. Besides the 
flattering honour, I do think ' a cheer ' in the right tone useful just 
now in Connaught. 

" Unfortunately I fixed the 18th for the dinner; had I got your 
Grace's letter sooner, most Reverend Dr MacHale, I should have 
stated to you the facts relative to my position, and have left you 
to decide for me. As it is, I have no remedy, as I have to dine in 
Tralee on the 14th; in Cork, I fear, on the 16th ; in Shadbally on 
the 20th ; and in Dublin on the 25th ; and in Birmingham on the 
28th — tbese are all public dinners. 

" The dinner-invitation is for Galway town. I had hoped it 
would have been in Tuam. I also, in accepting the invitation, 
had cherished the pleasing expectation of meeting your Grace, and 
having the benefit of a detailed communication with you. It is 
indeed a bitter disappointment to me to find that your unavoidable 
absence in Parliament precludes my having the benefit of laying 
^55 before you my views of the present prospects of our country. There 

is much gloom, but I think I perceive the coining light behind the 
political passing cloud. I must inflict a long and teilious letter on 
your Grace, as I am deprived of the pleasing and more useful mode 
of personal communication. 

" I need not say with what pleasure I should have availed myself 
of your Grace's kind hospitality if circumstances permitted. 

" I have the honour to be, my Lord, of your Grace the most faith- 
ful devoted servant, Daniel O'Connell." 

" Tbalee, 15th January 1836. 
" My respected Lord, — I had the honour to receive your Grace's 
letter of the 13th this morning. I have so much to do here that I 
fear I will not be able to go farther than Limerick on Sunday. I 
will, however, endeavour to meet at Ennis. I mean to travel thence 
to Gort, where there are horses engaged for me. I cannot, I pre- 
sume, be disappointed of horses in Loughrea. I know not, but I 
believe that there is an intermedial stage between Loughrea and 
Tuam ; and I fear no delay but that which may arise from the want 



m 



n 



lh 



of horses at that intermediate stage. At all events, I will start so 
early on Monday morning as to be certain of reaching Tuam in time 
for the dinner. 

" I will feel truly happy to find myself a guest in ' the palace ' 
of your Grace. 

" I have the honour to be, my Lord, of your Grace the very re- 
spectful most faithful servant, Daniel O'Connell." 

"London, 2Sth April 1836. 

" My ever-respecti d Lord, — I of course have felt a deep in- 
terest in the fate of Mayo since it has been emancipated from the 
' Brownists ;' but, at the same time, I entertain the confident 
expectation that all must be well when under the eye of your Grace. 
The only reason I had to entertain the least apprehension was from 
seeing the published proceedings of Mr O'Dowd and others, who, 
at this distance, appeared to me to be placing themselves in the 
attitude to do mischief. I candidly confess that I had hoped that 
Lord Dillon's son had been well advised to alter his address, and to 
pledge himself so distinctly to popular principles. I had hoped he 
had been thus advised by your Grace. If that were the case, I 
should expect that he would not meet with any opposition from any 
of the popular party. 

" Indeed, if I had deemed it necessary, I should long since have 
written to recommend them strongly to your Grace's consideration. 

" Of course, I need not add that I would not give the slightest 
countenance to any person who had not your approbation. I got a 
letter this day from R. O. Brown, stating that he was the candidate 
who had ' the support of Br MacIIale ! ' 

"If that be so, I most heartily wish him success. But if it be 
not so, then I could wish it were in my power to do any act to 
prevent a contest with whoever you, upon the whole, consider the 
most fit person. You have been so instrumental in liberating the 
county last election, that you ought to have that deference paid to 
your judgment independent of the many, many other rights you 
have to public confidence. 




LETTERS TO Dlt 2d AC HALE. 



" If, therefore, my name can influence a single voter, you may 
vise it in the most absolute and unlimited manner for him whom 
you deem the best man. I think, at this distance, that Mr Dillon 
is that man. But I repeat, shape a letter from me to the electors 
in any form you please, deprecating and reprobating division, and 
putting forward any other topics you may deem useful. That is, of 
course, if you think anything of the kind useful. 

" I will avow anything you do. I would write a letter myself if 
I knew what kind of letter you wished. I still feel assured that 
all will be well. The only thing I deem the occasion to require is 
respectfully to implore of your Grace to take an active share in 
the struggle to prevent mischief and secure good. I say this lest 
you should be disgusted with the faults or follies of any of the 
partisans, and so shrink from the effort to ensure for the county the 
best man in the best manner. 

" I have the honour to be, with profound respect and veneration, 
of your Grace, the most faithfusl servant and affectionate friend, 

" Daniel O'Connell. 

" Most Rev. Dr MacHale, &c, ifcc." 

In July we find a letter which shows the personal and 
active interest he took in the National Bank which he had 
established. 

"National Bank of Ireland, 39 Old Broad Street, 
London, Id July 1S36. 

"My ever- respect kd Lord, — I have brought your Grace's 
letter here in order to have your recommendation complied with. 
There could be no difficulty in making out the appointment at once 
if you had . been able to certify to Mr Fitzgerald's knowledge of 
business. 

" The situation of manager requires a familiar habit of keeping 
accounts of a complicated nature. 

" If Mr Fitzgerald be such a cleric, his appointment as manager is 
certain ; but if he be not, then we could and would instantly 

2r 



appoint him as local director. The salary of a manager would be 
about £200 a year. The director's salary £.50 a year. The manager 
must give his entire time to the Bank. The director's attend- 
ance is not severe. It will be now for your Grace to say which 
office Mr Fitzgerald is suited for, and will accent. I have only to 
add that his appointment can be made out the moment you please 
to decide. 

" For myself, I wish to tell you in strict confidence, that I desire 
very ardently that all good men — all those we should desire to see safe 
— should as speedily as they can disembarrass themselves from the 
Agricultural Bank. I feel it a duty to tell you this fact, that it is 
certain that until lately, if at all, there was no partnership deed 
executed. I believe there is not a real company formed. They 
cannot, as I conceive, endure long. Their resources for capital 
must necessarily be small, their expenses great. To me, who am 
become familiar with banking operations, I cannot conceive how it 
is possible that that bank should hold out. I say this, my Lord, 
for your own guidance, if you should have to advise in confidence 
with any person on the subject, or if you felt any duty to give a 
private warning to any person. Of course, I should most anxiously 
desire not to say anything to injure the establishment of that bank. 
I speak merely in fear. I may, of course, be mistaken, but my 
own opinion is, that the Agricultural Bank will bring ruin on 
thousands. 

" You are, my Lord, aware of the political state of this country. 
I intend for Ireland to propose the revival of the Catholic Associa- 
tion in a new name and somewhat broader basis. It will bear the 
name of ' The General Association of Ireland ' — to be dissolved so 
soon as full corporate reform and a satisfactory adjustment of the 
tithe are obtained by law. 

" I intend to have the ' Irish rent ' to replace the Catholic rent, 
and to find a friend to indemnify tithe victims ; but this part of 
the arrangement will require discretion, tact, and some cautious 
management. You will see my plans fully developed in the Pilot 




\fi 



.'V 

11 



I 

\ Si 



of Wednesday. The state of parties here is singular ; as yet unde- 
fined in object. 

" The Tories have not as yet flattered themselves with coming 
into power. The popular party have not as yet framed any plan. 
There is much indignation, much discontent fomenting. As far as 
the English and Scotch towns are concerned, the public mind is 
decidedly favourable to Ireland. 

" I, however, am upon the whole convinced that the rejection by 
the Lords of oar bill will work for good. I will be leaving London 
in a fe-w weeks. The last debate this session will take place on 
Monday, and after that I am determined to go to Ireland to 
organise the agitation. 

"I have the honour to be, my respected Lord, of your Grace the 
most devoted faithful servant, Daniel O'Connell. 

" Most Rev. Dr MacHale." 

At the close of the year he wrote the following very 
interesting letter to Dr MacHale. His wife was dead, but 

Ireland still existed, and he was not wholly widowed: — 

"Merrion Square, 9th November 1837. 

" My ever-respected and dear Lord, — I know you pity ine, 
and afford me the relief of your prayers. To-morrow I begin to 
console my heart by agitation. I am now determined to leave every 
other consideration aside, and to agitate really — to agitate to the 
full extent the law sanctions. Command me now in everything. 

" I got this morning a blank cover, enclosing two letters for your 
Grace. I enclose one in this, and another in a second frank ; they 
would be over weight if sent together. The address has the name 
of Geo. Washington on the corner, whether an assumed name or 
not I have no room to conjecture. I mention these things merely 
to show your Grace that if these letters be not genuine, I am unable 
to afford any clue to the writer. They may, however, be perfectly 
correct in all particulars. 

" I believe we are safe in all the counties and towns in Connaughfc 




ACCESSION OF VICTORIA 




save Sligoand Athlone. I indeed believe the latter tolerably secure. 
Every nerve must be strained to increase the Irish majority in 
Parliament. My watchword is— 'Irish or Repeal.' Indeed, I 
entertain strong hopes that we shall live to see the latter — ' a 
consummation most devoutly to be wished.' 

" Dr England was with me yesterday ; he gave me some strong 
evidence of the hostility of the English Catholics to those of 
Ireland. He has promised to give it to me iu writing, and I will 
send your Grace a copy. He goes off to ' Haite ' next week, but 
purposes to return next year, and then intends to suggest a place 
for a Foreign Missionary Society in Ireland, should it meet with 
the approbation of the Irish prelates. Irish priests are abundantly 
abused, yet they are in demand by the religious and zealous Catholics 
all over the world. 

" I have the honour to be, with profound respect, my revered 
Lord, of your Grace the devoted servant, 

" Daniel O'Connell. 

" Most Rev. Dr MacHale, &c." 

William IV. died in 1837, and was succeeded by Vic- 
toria. A general election was the immediate result, and 
O'Connell again exerted himself with superhuman energy 
to obtain the return of Irish members who should have a 
true interest in Ireland. 

O'Connell was unseated on petition for Dublin, but in 
a few days he was returned fur Kilkenny. His power in 
Parliament was more and more felt ; 8 and as his enemies 

8 There were some public men in England then who were able to 
form a fair, if not an altogether just opinion of O'Connell's character 
and career. At the close of the year 1835, Colonel Napier wrote :— 
" O'Connell is not a great man, but I don't agree with you that he gets 
his money wrongfully or meanly. He has undertaken a great and excel- 



MOUNT MELLERAY ABBEY. 



could not get rid of him, they calumniated him. Professor 
Wilson attacked him in Blackwood's Magazine, and declared 
that he had taken a bribe of £1000 for proposing to have 
the Factory Bill discussed in committee. O'Connell indig- 
nantly denied this false charge ; hut it shows how powerful 
was the influence of the Irish agitator. 

At the close of the year 1837, O'Connell made a retreat 
at Mount Melleray Abbey. This noble institution was 
founded in the year 1832 by the monks of the Cistercian 
monastery of Melleray near Nantes. The greater number 
of these monks were Irish, and naturally looked to Ire- 
land for a place of refuge when driven from their home. 
After various wanderings, they settled in their present 
establishment; and when O'Connell visited the place, the 
church* was nearly complete. The guest-house, however, 
being unfinished, he was obliged to live in the lodge, which 
will he seen on the view of the buildings given in this work. 

O'Connell's visit was a marked event in the annals of 



lent work, the freeing of his country from the most diabolical and 
horribly various tyranny that ever was endured ; and as he is unable to 
do it by war, he must do it by art. Hence many things he must sub- 
mit to, many mean acts lie must commit, because he has to deal with 
the meanest and lowest of men. You judge him harshly ; he does not 
do the thing in the noblest way, but he does do it. It' he did not take 
money, he would have been driven from the field long ago. If he fought, 
he would have been killed long ago. He is a general to be provided and 
paid, for the sake of his army and his cause. Don't run him down, or 
you rim down the only chance of poor starving wretches here, whose 
fate depends upon his success."— Life of Sir W. Napier, vol. i. p. 458. 






i 



(§\ 



0' COS SELL MAKES A RETREAT. 



this Order. It is probable that the death of his wife 
had reminded him of his own end, and given a holier, if 
not a more religious, tone to his thoughts. Besides his 
deep love for his own faith, there was a certain vein of 
sympathetic devotion in his character which led him to 
appreciate well the aesthetic beauty of her services. For 
many years he had been a practical Catholic ; he had 
not only professed, but he also practised his religion. 
As time passed on, and as domestic bereavements re- 
minded him that he must also be judged for the deeds 
done in the flesh, he wished to think a little that he 
might learn what had been amiss (for how can we repent 
of sins of which we are ignorant?), and to pray a little 
more than usual for the mercy of which he might so soon 
have need. 

There are many gentlemen, of all classes of society, 
who, both before O'Connell's time and since, have visited, 
and continue to visit, the abbey of Mount Melleray for the 
same purpose. 

O'Connell travelled from Dublin with Mr O'Neil Daunt, 
in his own carriage. On the journey, he not unnatur- 
ally looked back upon his past, and talked of his long 
struggles for Catholic Emancipation, for which he was 
then enjoying a special reward. Had he not obtained this 
act of justice from England, Catholics would have been 
denied the assistance of such holy retreats, and of such help 
as they give to prepare for the unending life. 



He spoke of the Clare election, and again asserted, what, 
indeed, no one lias attempted to deny, that the Duke of 
Wellington granted Emancipation through fear, from the 
knowledge that by far the greater part of the army was 
Catholic. 

It was on this occasion that O'Connell told the following- 
anecdote : — 

"After the Clare election," said he, " there was a remarkably fine 
young man named Ryan, as handsome a fellow as ever I saw, who 
had been made a serjeant, although not more than a year in the 
army. In one of our popular processions we encountered a march- 
ing detachment ; and as my carriage passed, this young serjeant 
walked away from his men, and asked me to shake hands with him. 
' In acting as I now do,' said he, 'I am guilty of infringing military 

discipline. Perhaps I may be flogged for it— but I don't care let 

them punish me in any way they please; let them flog me, and send 
me back to the ranks ; I have had the satisfaction of shaking the 
hand of the father of my country.' There were many unequivocal 
indications of a similar spirit in the army; and, doubtless, such a 
spirit among the troops was not without its due weight with the 
Dnke. As to my enthusiastic friend, the young serjeant, I after- 
wards learned that his little escapade was overlooked ; and right 
glad I was to find that his devotion to me entailed no punishment 
upon him." 

In such talk the day passed, and the gentlemen slept at 
the " Royal Oak." They resumed their journey next 
morning at six o'clock, and breakfasted at Kilkenny, where 
O'Connell was waited on by many of the leading Repealers 
and urged very earnestly to agitate for Repeal. O'Connell 
replied that he was perfectly willing to do so, but that the 




period had not yet expired which he had decided upon 
allowing to the Imperial Legislature for the fulfilment of 
the promise they made to him in 1834 to do justice to 
Ireland. 

The ascent of the mountains which divide Tipperary 
from Waterford is as bleak and cold as the southern 
descent is rich and beautiful. When passing the little 
village of Clogheen, in Tipperary, the weather became wet 
and stormy, and at last blew a tremendous gale. The drive 
from Lismore to Mount Melleray is exquisitely beautiful ; 
but as the travellers arrived at the abbey after dark, they 
could not see its fine proportions until the following 
morning. 

O'Connell was received at the outer gate by a proces- 
sion of monks, with the abbot at their head. They had 
waited all the afternoon and evening for his appearance, 
and had placed messengers on the road to watch his 
approach. He was conducted to the choir, where the monks 
sang one of their grand anthems ; and when he knelt, the 
Te Deum Laudamus was intoned. O'Ccnnell had received 
many ovations, but none had touched his heart like this. 
It was an anticipation of the eternal welcome which alone 
can reward any human labour. Amidst the pealing of 
bells, the swaying of censers, and the grand solemn voice 
of monks, he felt at home, for he had come to prepare for 
Home. 

An address was then presented to him, to which, from 




excess of emotion, he seemed scarcely able to reply ; and he 
afterwards retired into solitude, speaking only to the abbot, 
and devoting his whole time to prayer and recollection. 9 

While O'Connell was at Mount Melleray, Mr Villiers 
Stuart called on him. But the Liberator had given orders 
that lie was not to be disturbed in his retreat, and Mr Stuart 
was obliged to retire. A few days after, he alluded to that 
circumstance at a public meeting at Lismore, and said, 
" He was happy to find that Mr O'Connell's sojourn at 
Mount Melleray had not infected him with the silence of 
its inmates, as his adoption of the Carthusian rules would 
seriously injure the interests of popular liberty in Ireland." 

The following letters refer to political events in the year 
1837 :— 

"May 26, 1837. 

" My dear Mr O'Connell, —In accordance with the wishes of 
the clergy of this diocese, as well as my own, I beg leave to transmit 
to you their petition on the approaching Tithe Bill, accompanied 
with their request that you will have the goodness to present it, at 
your earliest convenience, in the House of Commons. I cannot 
express to you how great the dissatisfaction of the people is at the 
prospect of being obliged to pay the full amount of the tithes after 
the hopes so often held out to them of being released from the 
odious impost. Paying it to the landlord rather than the parson, 



s The object of a retreat is to think of God, of heaven, and of our 
own helps and hindrances on the road thither. We are indebted to the 
present abbot of Mount Melleray, the Right Rev. Dr Fitzpatrick, for a 
copy of the address presented to Mr O'Connell, and for a full account of 
Ins visit ; but having no space to insert it here, we reserve it for another 
work. 



I ■'■-' d 






I 



tbey do not conceive to be any benefit to them. Though it cannot 
be expected that they should be all at once relieved from the incum- 
brance of the Protestant Establishment, there should be at least a 
commencement in reducing to practice 'the principle of justice by 
getting rid of it in those districts in which the Protestant clergy 
have no congregations. This was a feature in last year's bill, of 
which the omission in that of the present session has rendered very 
unpopular. The former gave a pledge, by this incipient reduction 
of the Establishment, of its total legislative extinction in due time. 
The present bill holds out no such encouraging prospect. As for 
the ten per cent, for education, the sum could not by any means 
reconcile the people to an exactment which would confirm the claims 
of the parsons to a large portion of the tithes, of which they 
have so precarious a tenure, without freeing them from any portion 
of the remainder. On no other measure are the hearts of the people 
so much fixed as ou their release from contributing to the support of 
an Establishment that is ever opposed to their best interests. The 
Tithe Bill they look on as the test of the justice which has been so 
long promised, but of which the performance is, they complain, so 
lung delayed. Such is the general feeling throughout this extensive 
district, as I have learned from the assembled clergy, and which we 
deemed it our duty to convey to the Legislature. 

" Wishing you many happy years to aid in the consummation of 
that justice which the country expects, I have the honour to remain, 

" t John MacHale." 

Confidential. 

" London, 3\st May 1837 
"My DEAR AND REVERED Lord, — I had the honour of receiv- 
ing your Grace's letter, and the still more cherished honour of your 
confiding to me the petition of the clergy of your archdiocese. It is a 
petition fraught with matter, and pregnant with wants. The Ministry 
is tottering to its base, and the old oppressors are ready again to 
pounce upon Ireland. I am, I own, timid, and could have wished 




P 

-1 



that this blow had not been given to the falling fabric (if ministerial 
power. I do believe it will be decisive of their fate. But do nut 
understand these as tones of reproach. I may be sorrowful, but in 
plain truth I can have no elements in my mind which could create 
anger, when, as in this instance, the wise and the good adopt a course 
too bold for my humbler temper. What I grieve atissimply that it 
should have been necessary for your Grace to have adopted that 
course at the moment of all others most critical to the continuance 
of the only bearable Government Ireland ever experienced since the 
fatal day when the followers of the murderer of Becket polluted our 
shores. 

" Perhaps I would have been anxious to have canvassed the pre- 
sent tithe measure with you had I been apprised of your opinions 
upon it. It is now too late ; yet, in vindication of myself, permit 
me to say— 1st, That this bill is not worse than the bill of last 
year, for that kept a parson in every parish. It was Lord Morpeth's 
first plan which excluded resident parsons from totally Catholic 
parishes. Even that first plan gave a species of missionary fund for 
every parish whatsoever. 2d, That this bill gives no additional 
legal ' rivet' to our chains. The Tithe Composition Acts gave legal 
rights to every parson to the fullest extent the law could give 
them. Stanley's bill riveted and completed the iron bond of law • 
it is not possible to go farther. 3d, That this bill gives a new in- 
vestigation in every case where the tithe composition is too high 

a matter of great importance, so long as the impost remains in any 
shape. 4th, That this bill at one blow strikes off £30 per cent, of 
the impost, affording a precedent for going further ; and if such a 
bill passed, it would be the first law directly depriving the parsons, 
in all cases, of any percentage. 5th, That it appropriates £10 per 
cent, in direct terms out of the impost to other than parson purposes 
—namely, to education. Thus the new bill would introduce a new 
legislation for the first time, taking from the parsons £40 per cent., 
£30 as reduction, £10 as appropriation, operating upon both ends 
of the scale. 



H 




" It is quite true that, although the parsons would lose by this bill 
£i0 per cent., there is this difficult)', that the landlords would 
pocket, in many instances, part, at least, of the £30 per cent, 
reduced. But that is a difficulty inherent in the abolition of tithes. 
In spite of every precaution to the contrary, there is that, in the 
present agrarian economy of Ireland, of a mischievous tendency to 
throw into the pockets of the landlord every sum of which the 
tenant is relieved. This, however, is not to be attributed as a fault 
to Lord Morpeth's present measure. It has that fault in common 
with every other plan of partial or even total abolition. 

"I address these observations to your Grace, not only respect- 
fully, but, I will venture to say, in sentiments of affectionate respect. 
Your character is indeed cherished by me in a mode which makes 
it equally reverenced and loved. I believe your Grace to be a great 
blessing, bestowed by a merciful Providence on a long persecuted, 
and, I trust, now rising and spreading religion. Judge then how 
poignant must be the regret with which I differ from you and 
from your eloquent and powerful resolutions. Perhaps, indeed, 
my more feeble judgment is clouded by my apprehensions of, I 
fear, the now certain advent of Orange restored rule in Ireland, 
aggravated as that bitter misfortune will be by the fact that, in the 
exercise of a conscientious and awful duty, the clergy of Tuam have 
been under the necessity of accelerating that deplorable restoration. 
But the motto of purer spirits has ever been,' FiatjustUia mat rcelum.' 

" I do, however, my revered Lord, feel so deeply on this subject that 
I write off for my son, who is, I trust, sufficiently recovered for the 
journey to support the Ministers. But as the majority of the Con- 
naught members will, as they ought, take their tone from your 
Grace, the consequence will be the Ministers will be left in a 
minority ; and as they came into power on the Irish Church Bill, so 
will they be compelled to go out upon the same subject. The old 
Judges will of course resign, and for another generation justice ! ! 1 
will be administered to the Irish people by the Wests, the Jacksons, 
the Brewsters, the Lyttons, and the Blackburns. 



LETTER TO BR MACHALE. 



" It is almost in despair that I venture to suggest to your Grace just 
this— for your consideration — whether, as it is in committee of the 
House alterations may be made in the bill in all its details, and as 
the committee comes after the first and second reading, you would 
think it right to write to each of the friendly Connaught members, 
counselling them to support the bill into committee, and when there, 
endeavouring to extend its relief and lessen its mischief. That 
would probably prevent any Catholic from being a party to the 
downfall of the Mulgrave Administration in Ireland. But if this 
course does not appear to your cool and deliberate judgment to be a 
right one, then, of course, your Grace will treat my suggestion as 
one which ought not to be acted upon, and, at all events, forgive 
me for making it. You will easily estimate the deep, the absorb- 
ing anxiety for the peace of [reland, which alone stimulates me to 
make this suggestion. If, however, it were to be acted upon, it 
ought to be done without delay. This I submit to your Grace. 

" I need not add, that although I myself deem Lord Morpeth's mea- 
sure a valuable instalment, and as a politician know how it would 
aid my next move, yet I will, as of course (sic), do every justice in 
my power to the petition with which I feel so highly, so truly hon- 
oured. But I will not present it until I have an opportunity of 
learning whether the .sentiments of this letter render me in your 
Grace's eyes less fit to have the honour of presenting it to the 
House. 

" The King, they say, is recovering. I do believe that a sentiment 
not very respectful to his Majesty made many choose to believe he 
was worse than he really was ; at all events, he mbs over this bout, 
" I have the honour to be, with sentiments of the sincerest re- 
spect, my Lord, of your Grace the devoted and affectionate servant, 

"Daniel O'Connell. 
" Most Fiev. Dr MacHale." 



" Tuah, June 4, 1837. 
"My dear Mr O'Connell,— I have been favoured with your 
much esteemed letter of the 31st ultimo. It is impossible for me 






m 



638 



LETTER FROM DR MAC II ALE. 



to make any adequate return for the kind feelings which your valued 
favour conveys. It is not without the deepest regret that I could 
be brought to differ with you on any question regarding the interests 
of Ireland. Your indefatigable exertions in its behalf, and the 
unparalleled services you have already rendered, give you a title to 
1 be just confidence of all your countrymen. Were the present Tithe 
Bill a matter of mere difference of opinion between us, I should 
acquiesce in your superior and experienced judgment. Coming in 
daily contact with-the clergy, and having a good deal of intercourse 
with the people themselves, I can state that I never knew a measure 
to which they are more opposed. Their aversion to the bill is such 
as that I am convinced no influence that the clergy could exercise 
would persuade: them of its advantage. The thirty per cent, to the 
landlord, so far from looking to it as a boon, they really regard as an 
encouragement to that body to unite with the Establishment in the 
wish to perpetuate the impost What confirms the distrust of the 
people in the measure is, that the bill is palatable to many of the 
parsons of the country and to the Tory landlords. It is a matter of 
notoriety that some of the latter laboured to have public meetings 
to petition the Legislature to pass the bill into law. We endeavoured 
to convey to them the impression of the people, that they considered 
the Tithe Bill anything but justice. Besides our own opinions, we 
gave expression to the deep and general discontent it excited. 

" Had the people any doubt of its tendency to fasten the tithe 
system on them, they would be convinced of it by finding the mea- 
sure hailed by many of their old oppressors. Nothing could have 
been further from our minds than a wish to embarrass the Govern- 
ment by unnecessary remonstrance. As they professed an anxiety 
to do justice to the people, their tithe measure was not regarded 
as any approximation to that justice, and that they mistake 
their silence for acquiescence. It would not be just to the Go- 
vernment to let them imagine that they would be conferring a 
favour by a measure which we knew excited general discontent. 
We were therefore impelled by a deep sense of duty to convey the 





|f.'! 



seasonable petition to the Legislature, in the hope that the Govern* 
ment might be induced to make larger concessions to the just 
demands of the people. Having embodied in our resolutions and 
petition the general feelings and deliberate opinions of the as- 
sembled clergy, as well as of their flocks, I could not, without for- 
feiting their confidence, take upon myself to control the effect which 
they might have on their representatives. I regret much that the 
Government has not taken a firmer stand in endeavouring to realise 
its professions to do justice. By its frustrate attempts to conciliate 
the Tories, its strength has been gradually impaired. Hoping that 
by doing more justice to Ireland it may still retrieve itself to its 
former vigour, I am, etc. <fcc., -J- John MacHale. 

" To Mr O'Conuell." 

Iu the early part of the .year 1838, O'Connell was actively 
engaged in promoting Catholic interests iu London. On 
the 21st of July he was publicly entertained at the Crown 
and Anchor Tavern in London. A number of members of 
Parliament were present, and the chairman, Sir Lacy de 
Evans, said that O'Connell was " the object of the atten- 
tion of the whole Empire, and the admiration of the best 
and most enlightened men, not only of England, but of 
the world." 

This is yet another evidence of the incorrectness of the 
idea, which has been so popular of late years, that O'Con- 
nell was a mere demagogue, who kept the English Cabinet 
in fear, not by the power of his mind, but by the violence 
of his action. 

At the conclusion of his speech, he said — 
" A sensation of awe came over him when he beheld such an as- 
semblage in any way connected with his humble name. What was 






it that had brought so many independent Englishmen to pay a com- 
pliment to him? He believed the compliment was paid to the great 
principle on which he had always acted — that of avoiding the pro- 
secution of political advantages by force, violence, or fraud. . . . 
The Irish Reform Bill ought to have been more extensive ; it was 
full of faults, and the worst part of it was that it exposed Ireland 
to all the machinations of the Spottiswoode gang, to pecuniary cor- 
ruption in its worst form, and, above all, to the perjury of Tory 
committees. He had said in the House of Commons, and he re- 
peated it now, that Ireland was not safe from the perjury of Eng- 
lish and Scotch gentlemen. They sacrificed their conscience to party 
— it was horrible to think of it; persons who were gentlemen in 
rank and fortune, who ought by their conduct to preach morality 
to others, and who dispensed justice from magisterial benches — was 
it not horrible that they should be perjuring themselves hourly as 
members of committees in the House of Commons ? But the time 
was come when this should be proclaimed boldly. He was ready 
to be the martyr to justice and truth, though not to false swearing ; 
and therefore he repeated that there was foul perjury in the Tory 
committees of the House of Commons. He asked them, was it not 
their duty to assist him in putting an end to this system ; to give 
him their assistance in rendering the Irish Reform Bill at least as 
perfect as theirs ; and to give to Ireland the same measure of muni- 
cipal reform England already enjoyed 1 He wanted all alike — for 
now they were all unlike." 

This was brought before the House, and O'Connell was 
ordered to be reprimanded ; but, like Lord Edward Fitz- 
gerald, who only reasserted his original assertion when de- 
sired to apologise in the Irish Commons, he merely replied, " I 
express no regret, I retract nothing, I repent nothing. I do 
not desire unnecessarily to use hard or offensive language. 
I wish I could find terms less objectionable and equally 




significant ; but I cannot, 
asserted." 

O'Connell expected to be sent to the Tower, but the 
Tories were afraid of him. Indeed, an effort was made 
even during this year, to conciliate him. He was offered 
the Chief Baron's seat, but he refused. Those who have 
ventured to assert that O'Connell was not a disinterested 
lover of his people and his native land, should ask them- 
selves how many are there who would have refused such an 
offer, above all, when he might have pleaded a need for 
rest in old age, and that his work was done since Emanci- 
pation had been obtained ? ' 

During the year 1838, O'Connell kept up a constant 
correspondence with the Archbishop of Tuam. In July 
he sent him the following circular letter on the subject of 
the Dublin Review, which was then conducted with remark- 
able ability. For some years the articles contained in it 
were a credit to the nationality, and to the faith of its 

1 The following extract from Mr Daunt's work shows that the refusal 
cost O'Connell a good deal : — " This is very kind— very kind indeed," 
said O'Connell ; "but I have not the least notion of taking the offer. 
Ireland could not spare me now ; not but, if she could, I don't at all 
deny that the office would have great attractions for me. Let me see 
now. There would not be more than about eighty days' duty in the year. 
I would take a country-house near Dublin, and walk into town ; and 
during the intervals of judicial labour, I'd go to Darrynane. I should 
be idle in the early part of April, just when the jack-hares leave the 
most splendid trails upon ♦b.e mountains. In fact, I should enjoy the 
oilice exceedingly on every account, if I could but accept it consistently 
with the interests of Ireland; but I cannot." 

2 S 



m 



THE "DUBLIN REVIEW." 



principal contributors. The most important questions of 
the day were taken up by men of remarkable ability, most 
of whom were professors, some of whom were even students, 
in Maynooth. O'Connell and Dr Wiseman were the guid- 
ing spirits. Subjects relating to Ireland naturally ob- 
tained a prominent place, for it was well known that but 
for Ireland and Irish Catholics the Review would probably 
never have existed, and that the Irish Catholics were an 
overwhelming majority. But polemics were not neglected, 
and were handled with singular ability and trenchant force. 
Many of the early converts to the Catholic faith owe their 
conviction of Catholic truth to the masterly refutations of 
errors contained in articles penned in Ireland by an Irish 
priest. Truth was put forth boldly and broadly, and the 
subtleties of metaphysical theology were relegated to the 
schools. 

The original of the following letter is a lithograph, the 
word "Lordship" being crossed out by O'Connell, and 
"Grace" substituted. It may be only a little matter, but 
little matters are often characteristic; and, undoubtedly, 
one of O'Connell's marked characteristics in minor affairs 
was his remarkable and unvarying courtesy of manner 
and respectfulness of tone in addressing the hierarchy 

or the priesthood. 

"16 Pall Mall, London, ISth February 1833. 

"My Lord, — I beg leave very respectfully to call your attention to 
the Dublin Review, of which I am one of the proprietors. 

" The object with which this publication was instituted was and 



if 



I 



k 
o 



*m$Mm 




; 



9 i 






is to afford the Catholic literature of these countries a fair and 
legitimate mode of exhibiting itself to the people of the British 
Empire, and especially to the people of Ireland, in the shape most 
likely to produce a permanent as well as useful effect. The other 
quarterly publications are in the hands either of avowed and 
malignant enemies of Catholicity, or of what is worse, insidious and 
pretended friends, who affect a false liberality at the expense of 
Catholic doctrines. 

"The Dublin Review, though not intended for purely polemical 
discussion, contains many articles of the deepest interest to the 
well-informed Catholic disputant. The name of Dr Wiseman, who 
is also a proprietor of the work, ensures the orthodoxy of the 
opinions contained in it, and will be admitted to be in itself a pledge 
of the extent, and depth, and variety of its scientific, as well as 
theological information. 

"The seventh number is just published. The former numbers can 
be had either bound, or any one of them separately. Mr Staunton of 
the Morning Register, is in Dublin, the agent for Ireland. He will 
transmit the last, or any other number you please, to you free of 
carriage. 

" To sustain this publication, which, while Catholicity is assailed 
by so many virulent enemies, and has so few friends among the 
periodical literature, appears to me to be an object of considerable 
importance ; it will be necessary to increase its circulation, and 
augment the number of purchasers. It is for this purpose that I 
respectfully solicit your aid and friendly co-operation. 

" I have the honour to be, my Lord, your Grace's most faithful 
servant, Danikl O'Connell. 

" Most Rev. Dr MacHale, &c." 

The following letter is written in O'Connell's own hand- 
writing, on the back of the lithographed letter : — 

"Private. 
" P.S. — In calling the attention of your Grace to the enclosed 



'/ 



circular, I venture respectfully to direct your notice to my opposi- 
tion to the present scheme of poor-laws. It is a subject on which 
I have dwelt long and painfully, on which, if I be in error, I am 
exceedingly culpable. But my objections depend much on the 
effects to be produced on the ratepayers. An additional tax of one 
million at the least — affecting in the first instance, and almost ex- 
clusively, the occupiers — fills me with alarm; especially as imprison- 
ment in a workhouse is the only relief to be given ; that is, all 
relief is to be administered solely to persons inhabiting the work- 
house. 

" Your Grace must have seen my plan for the abolition of tithes. 
It would abolish them in toto, and throw the payment of Protestant 
clergy on the Consolidated Fund, giving to England and Scotland 
the same interest in abolishing sinecure livings in Ireland as the 
Irish have. 

"I conclude with the expression of my most respectful and affec- 
tionate regard, and sincere veneration." 



Dr MacHale's reply, of which his Grace has kept a copy, 
■will be read with interest. 

" Tuam, 27th February 1838. 

"My DEAR Mr O'CONNELL, — I have been favoured with your 
esteemed letter regarding the Dublin Review, and I entirely concur in 
your views as to the benefits of such a periodical. It has already been 
the medium of circulating many articles calculated to place our 
religion in very favourable light before its enemies. It is unneces- 
sary to say that I have been from the commencement a subscriber. 
It would, I think, command greater circulation by having the 
booksellers in the local districts engaged in its sale, and entitled to 
the centage they receive on such periodicals. 

"So impressed have I been with the evils with which the present 
Poor Provision Bill is fraught, that, before the receipt of your re- 
spected letter, I published that I coincided in your opposition to its 
details. I ventured, too, to express my surprise at the perseveranco 



of the Government in pressing such a measure, with the conscious- 
ness of their dependence on the support of the Irish representatives, 
and of the obnoxiousness of the measure to the feelings and the 
interests of the Irish people. They have not, it may be said, mani- 
fested this feeling by a corresponding number of petitions. The fact 
is, they tell us they are tired of petitioning, and though some should 
send petitions, others, adopting the philosophy of what is is best 
required more than ordinary stimulants, as you know, to rouse them 
to the least exertion in behalf of their country, nay, of religion. 
Besides, they do not see among their representatives themselves that 
arrayed and concentrated junction of the strength once character- 
istic of them, and which alone can ensure justice to Ireland. 

"The result of the ballot has not escaped their notice, and they 
deplore that place has had the effect of making .some vote against a 
measure essential to their protection. I wish I could be able to have 
your viaws on the tithe system carried into effect, so as to have the 
payment of Protestant clergy charged on the Consolidated Fund. 
I should hail such a measure as an excellent instalment, since then 
we could securely calculate on the co-operation of England and 
Scotland in finally doing justice as far as regarded the Protestant 
Establishment. 

" There is another subject regarding the interests of our religion 
on which you may do incalculable service. It is for procuring a 
grant for the separate education of Catholic children. This is the 
subject, and the only one, of which the Catholic bishops of Ireland 
have expressed their solemn and unanimous approval. It must come 
to this at last. The lamented indisposition of Dr Murray occasioned 
the adjournment of this question at our last meeting, and prevented 
our adoption of any resolution on the subject. The present system 
is far from being popular, nay, many of the bishops are conscious 
it is full of danger. I know that separate education would not be 
relished at present by the Government ; I know, too, that many, 
with an erroneous feeling of liberality, cherish the plan of mixed 
education. I like religion to be as free as air. which is the onlv 



m 




LETTER TO DR MAC HALE. 




true liberality, and the fate of the Archbishop of Cologne, the in- 
justice of 'which you have so eloquently denounced, and which ia 
the fruit of a plausible system of mixed education, can attest the 
benefits or evils of such a prospect. 

" I have the honour to be, yours, "J- John MacHale." 

O'Counell replied — 

"Mereion Square, lith April 1838. 

" My very respected Lord,- — I need not tell you with what a 
deep interest and profound respect I have followed your Grace's 
exposition of the present system of national education. I pretend 
not to decide ; but I do know that vigilance was never misplaced 
■whilst ' the wolf is on his walk.' 

" I have now to implore of your Grace to read the Pilot of Mon- 
day before you form your decided opinion on the new tithe plan. 
You will find in it my view of Lord John Russell's tithe resolutions. 
They contain much I dislike, but also have a smack of better 
principle, and of more easy application of future remedy, than the 
present system. I certainly do not mean to bestow anything like 
ungrateful praise upon them ; but you will judge me and my opinions 
with impartiality, though, I know, mixed with kindness. 

" I have the honour to be, with the most fervent wishes for your 
health and long life, of your Grace the most devoted and affectionate 
servant, Daniel O'Coxnell." 

" Tcasi, 29tk April 1838. 

" My dear Mr O'Conneix, — I waited for the appearance of 
your promised letter on the tithes before I should acknowledge 
your favour of the 14th, directing my attention to that exposition. 

tf It cannot be denied that the bill falls far short of what the 
Ministry was pledged to, and the people of Ireland expected. It 
has no appropriation clause. It does not reduce one of the super- 
numerary parsons, even where a single Protestant is not found ; nor 
does it, out of the reduction of thirty per cent., if I understand the 



i.ii\ 



LETTER FROM DR MACHALE. 



647 



resolutions correctly, give any advantage to the occupying tenantry. 
As for the surplus to be applied to the purposes of education, I 
must frankly own, that if he meant to apply it as the funds La 
management of this education board, it would be a curse rather 
a blessing. I am delighted that you have turned your attention 
to the bearings and workings of the present plan. Nothing can be 
more interesting to a statesman concerned than the moral improve- 
ment of a people, and especially to a Catholic filled with zeal for the 
purity of his religion. Now, one thing is certain, that an anti- 
Catholic Government is labouring to upset an essential principle, 
and to usurp the right of inculcating religious doctrine through 
books and masters of their own exclusive selection. I could be 
silent for ever on repeal, or even the tithe system, with all its 
baneful appendages ; but when I see a Government requiring 
a compromise and surrender of religion as the condition of its 
support, so much so, that I have known high ecclesiastics, 
otherwise pious, to own that they are silent from a fear of 
embarrassing the Ministry, I cannot comprehend any reason for 
justifying such expediency. Now, the Ministry, if anxious to lay 
the foundations of concord as well as prosperity, must banish every- 
thing vicious from the system of education. The greater number of 
the present members of the board are rank infidels. The books 
which they put into the hands of children are calculated to unsettle 
their belief, or, at least, to diminish their reverence for the faith of 
their fathers ; and by the entire system it is intended, as is acknow- 
ledged by a competent authority (Mr A. R. Blake), to place the 
religious education of the Catholics in the hands of the crown. Now, 
setting religion aside, you can best estimate the consequence of 
such a prospect in the abridgement of the liberties of the people. 
By a timely interference, the Irish members may prevent much 
angry discussion, which must eventually terminate in the correction 
of any plan by which the Government would attempt to inter- 
fere with the legitimate authority of the pastors or the religious 
liberty of the people. You know well the unconquerable attach- 



u 






merit of all classes to their faith. As I live, I shall not cease to 
expose and denounce any attempt to interfere with that faith ; 
and the more they try to silence me, the louder will be my re- 
monstrance ; for we must have complete religious freedom. 

"Wishing you every happiness and energy in effecting those 
objects tbat are still wanting to religious freedom, I have the 
honour, &c, - John MacHale." 

In August 1838, O'Counell commenced a vigorous agi- 
tation in Ireland, and established what he called the 
" Precursor Society," as a last effort to obtain full justice 
to Ireland from the British Legislature. His earnest desire 
to have both the sanction and assistance of Dr MacHale 
is evident from the following correspondence : — 



Private. 

"Darrynane Abbey, 6th Septrmber 1838. 

" My VENERATED LORD, — I feel the deepest anxiety that my 
present plan of agitation should meet favour in your eyes, because 
that would show that an intellect of the first order concurred with 
my humble judgment. That judgment induces me to mark that we 
have arrived at a period in which we may attain all we politically 
desire, or at least, much of it, if we take the proper means of achiev- 
ing our objects. 

" The aspect of public affairs is such as seems propitious to our 
pressing our claims. The unfortunate state of the crop will produce a 
winter and spring in England in which the working classes will suffer 
much ; and their political discontent already exhibits itself in a shape 
which may become truly formidable when aggravated by personal dis- 
tress and individual misery such as a scanty crop is sure to produce. 
There is also much brooding discontent on the Continent, much more, I 
believe, than is usually suspected. Some Prussian regiments the other 



BK? 



LETTER TO DR MAC II ALE. 



i 



day cried out for a constitution. It is true the soldiers were drunk ; 
but drunkenness is, to a proverb, sincere. But confining myself to 
tjie British Empire, the poorer classes are all disgusted and irritated 
at the limited franchise conceded by the Reform Bill, and amidst 
their clamours is our time to press claims founded on eternal justice. 
I may be greatly mistaken, but I do think that an additional 
bonus of 15 or even 25 per cent, to the landed interest would 
bring them over to separate the 'rent-charge ' from the Church, not 
of the people, and have them easily consent to appropriate the 
remaining 50 per cent, to purposes of real and public utility. I 
do believe that steady and universal exertion would free us from 
the incubus of the State-paid Church, and obtain for us all we 
desire besides. If, indeed, these things — I mean disconnection of 
the State from the Church, and real corporate reform — were 
achieved, we should then have ninety-nine out of every hundred of 
the 1 rish of every persuasion friendly to a domestic Parliament. If 
Connaught aids us with the efficiency which your Grace can put in 
motion, if you deem it right, we will have such an overwhelming 
majority of the Irish nation with us that the Lord-Lieutenant may 
go on to preach patience to the winds. The time for impatience is 
arrived. I think your province has given strong symptoms of the 
prevalence of a similar opinion much earlier, and, perhaps, more 
correctly formed ; but if you now, my Lord, think we ought to be 
aided, I would venture to promise complete success to this agitation. 
Perhaps the fate of Ireland depends on your decision. Thousands 
of ' Precursors,' headed by the dreaded name of ' John Tuam,' would 
make an impression just now beyond any ever before made by a 
numerical force. 

" I will await your Grace's reply with no small impatience. You 
will have seen in the Pilot of Monday last my first letter, with its 
objects in detail. How delighted I shall be if you think it right to 
enrol yourself as a ' Precursor ! ' But in every case, and always, 
believe me to be, with profound respect, of your Grace the most 
faithful servant, DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

" Most Kev. Dr MacHale, <fec." 



1 

w 



w 



650 



LETTER FROM DR MAC II ALE. 




" Tuam, 26th September-lS3S. 

" My dear Me O'Connell, — After being absent for some time, 
on my return I found here your much respected favour. I fully 
agree with you that, to secure the rights that are so insultingly 
denied them, the people must depend on their own strenuous 
exertions. 

" Indeed, they appear already to have been brought to that convic- 
tion, and hence the activity with which they are bestirring them- 
selves throughout all parts of the country. 

" For a long time they felt but little confidence in the present 
Ministry ; the Tithe Bill, in which they abandoned the principle on 
which they ousted their predecessors from office, has filled up the 
measure of the public distrust. 

" If the Ministers fancied that the Irish people could acquiesce in so 
unjust a law, they must already be convinced of their mistake, that 
all the united influence of the kingdom could not reconcile the people 
to an impost which is growing every day more odious ; and hence the 
Catholic clergy, in denouncing the Tithe Bill, and urging the 
necessity of an immediate resumption of the question in Parlia- 
ment, are only expressing the opinion and seconding the views of 
the people. 

" It is my sincere opinion that the people are justified in their fre- 
quent and emphatic intensifications, What has been done for them 1 

" Nay, more, they have no reason to expect much since the Mini- 
sters have declared against granting those measures on which you 
are insisting. If they expressed an inclination to extend the suf- 
frage or to enlarge the number of our representatives, or to reduce 
the Established Church to the dimensions required by justice, then 
indeed might there be reason for hope. 

" But from our present rulers what hope can we entertain, when, 
besides, u ith their inability, they proclaim their unwillingness to do 
us justice by insisting on the finality of reform, <fcc. 1 

" It is my conviction that the unreserved confidence which has 
been hitherto placed in the Ministry has had a baneful influence on 





the interests of Ireland, and that, if they were taught to feel that 
measures of general good, and not of individual benefits, would be 
the test of the public confidence, something would have been done 
for the country. If the Ministers recall their declarations that are 
on record, and which almost preclude us from hope, then might all 
in their exertions for the country identify their exertions with the 
support of our present rulers. 

" If they do not, I do not perceive that they have any claims to 
gratitude, and the people must strive to force on them by moral 
influence the necessity of doing justice to Ireland, not in name, but 
in reality. 

" Wishing you every happiness, I have the honour to remain, 
my dear Mr O'Connell, yours respectfully, 

" -f- John MacHale." 

" Darrynane Abbey, 4th October 1838. 
" My respected Lord— I wish I could be as sanguine as you 
are that the people will persevere in that course of agitation with 
which there is no hope for Ireland. I know to a certainty the 
Ministry are taking every means in their power to oppose the 
organisation of the ' Precursor Society.' I have been written to 
menacingly— I may call it so ; but their menaces, I need not tell 
your Grace, I despise. Let them threaten away. There are indeed 
several of the Ministry exceedingly anxious to be out of office ; and 
I have reason to believe that they are seriously thinking of resign- 
ing. All of them do not concur in this view, but so many do as to 
make it highly improbable they should face Parliament again. This, 
of course, I say in the strictest confidence ; but it is right that you 
should know the facts. The Tories, when they come in, will do 
sad work in Ireland, but we must do all we can to make them. 

" The only comfort I have is, that we have assisted the Whigs as 
long as there was any, even the slightest, prospect of their obtain- 
ing for Ireland any one advantage. Nor did we desert them until 
their incompetency to do us good almost equalled their unwillingness 
to exert themselves for us. It is, indeed, a dismal prospect to°have 




the insolent Tories again in power ; but the fault is not ours. My 
present anxiety is to have our organisation completed during the 
reign of the present Ministers. It is that which takes me up to 
Dublin in November. The four principles of our new agitation are 
— 1st, Complete corporate reform; 2d, Extension of the suffrage; 
3d, Total extension of compulsory Church support ; and 4th, Ade- 
quate representation in Parliament. These seem to me to constitute 
the proper basis of future agitation. On these I think we should 
organise for that contest which is now inevitable. When the Tories 
return to power they of course will again endeavour to establish the 
ascendency of the Protestant clergy and aristocracy. It seems to 
me that it would be highly useful, or, at least, that it is the prudent 
course, to have our organisation as perfect as we well can before the 
enemy assumes the reins of government. I entreat the consideration 
of your Grace to these topics, as this is the best plan for future 
agitation, or can you assist me with any other ? Connaught will 
naturally go with your Grace. If you approve of my project we 
shall have from the 'west "abundant" precursors.' I fear much 
for the result unless I can procure your aid, depending, as that aid 
must, on your deliberate and powerful judgment. I see a mistake 
committed by several speakers at the great tithe meetings. It is in 
seeking for the repeal of the Tithe Bill of last session without 
repeating at the same time Lord Stanley's Tithe P.ill ; the first 
which removed the payment of the tithe composition from the 
tenants to the landlords. It is astonishing how rapidly Stanley's 
Act was prospering. It had come into operation in no less than 
oue-half of the tithe compositions in Ireland. By a parliamentary 
return it appears that more than one half of the tithe composition 
had become payable by the landlords in the short time since Lord 
Stanley's Act was passed — that is, in about four years. The transi- 
tion was going on rapidly, and one landlord after . another was 
submitting. The new Act has completed the transition with a loss 
to the parsons of one-fourth of the entire. 

" Our business is to look to the appropriation of that which 




O'Connells last look at the Irish Shon 




remains — not the miserable appropriation which the Government 
promised, and which would operate only after existing leases had 
dropped, hut an appropriation immediate and universal. 

" I have the honour to be, most respectfully, of your Grace the 
most faithful servant, Daniel O'Connell. 

" Most Rev. Dr MacHule, &c." 

" Darrynaxe Abbey, 23d Odoher 1838. 
" My esteemed Lord, — I am indeed anxious to accept the honour 
intended me in Galway, but it is not at present in my power to 
name the day. If my valued friends will allow me to postpone the 
actual nomination of the day, I will then, with mingled pride and 
pleasure, accept the invitation for some day about the 12th, or from 
that to the loth of November. The precise day I will be able to 
appoint within a week, if I am permitted to take this liberty, if 
any difficulty occurs, of course I must, but with the deepest regret, 
'decline an honour which I appreciate more highly than I can de- 
scribe. We are come to a most important crisis. Our friends are 
not powerful enough to serve us effectually. Our enemies are so 
powerful as to be able to stop all salutary legislation on our behalf. 
What are we therefore to reiy on 1 Only on our own exertions. We 
conquered great difficulties already, and we will be able to conquer 
those that remain. If the spirit of unanimous exertion be once 
roused, we cannot fail. I have the happiness to know that the 
North of Ireland will come forward in its strength and intelligence, 
and I do hope that the other parts of Ireland will evince that their 
former patrotic ardour is capable of being reanimated, and of pro- 
ducing the most useful effects. Ireland, blessed by Heaven, is able 
to work out her own destinies. She will not allow herself any 
longer to be trampled on by the fell demon of Orange tyranny. That 
bigot faction seeks a restoration to pi >wer which would fill the land 
with afflictions, and the people with almost insufferable oppression. 
The Tory party in England is identified with Orangeism iu Ire- 
land, and is ready to indulge that hated and hateful faction in the 




■w 









LETTER TO DR MACHaLE. 



renewal of all the scenes of domination, peculation, and blood, in 
which that foul faction so long indulged itself with impunity. 

" We have, believe me, my respected Lord, but one way to escape 
the renewal of Orange tyranny, and that is to organise the people 
of Ireland into peaceable, legal, and constitutional combination. 

" It appears to me that the Precursor Society affords us the best 
opportunity of forming that combination. If I can get — and why 
should I not get ? — two millions of Precursors, I will answer for 
complete success. 

" I have the honour to be, my dear Lord, your Lordship's most 
faithful and grateful servant, Daniel O'Connell. 

" Right Rev. Dr MacHale." 

"Mebrion Square, 15th December 1838. 
" My ever-respected Lord, — In the affair of the unfortunate 
Captain Gleeson, I must, in parliamentary slang, report progress, 
and ask leave to write again. There is, however, no pleasantry in 
my mind on the subject. The facts have occurred in this order : — > 
The day after I arrived in town I had communicated to the Lord- 
Lieutenant that my conviction was that he (Captain Gleeson) was 
treated with great injustice. In consequence, the documents in 
the matter were handed over to Mr Druimnond to be prepared to 
meet me and to justify the conduct of Government. I accordingly 
waited on that gentleman, and found that, though he had the docu- 
ments in his possession — they were lying on his desk— he had not 
read them. I, however, availed myself of the opportunity to give 
him a distinct view of the utter falsity of the principal ground of 
dismissal — that which alleged a, false charge of drunkenness against 
Mr St Clair O'Malley. I called, in the strongest terms, for an in- 
vestigation and trial of the truth or falsehood of that allegation. I 
mentioned that Captain Gleeson stated that he had more than ten 
witnesses to support his assertion. I believe I made some impres- 
sion. I certainly did all I could to make it. I was promised a 
speedy communication. A great deal was said of Lord Morpeth's 
being the patron of Mr Gleeson, and of his being satisfied with the 




decision ; but all this is trash. I have since had no further com- 
munication from Mr Drummond, but immediately on receipt of your 
letter I wrote to him again, pressing the case for investigation on 
trial. I went again pretty fully into my views of it, and I deemed 
it right to send him privately, and under another cover, your letter 
to me in order to show him how deep an interest was taken in the 
injustice done to poor Gleeson. I have had as yet no answer, nor 
can I press for one before Wednesday next, on which day I will see 
Lord Morpeth; and I have a right to a reply, which I will of course 
insist upon. I never felt a deeper interest for any man than I do 
for him, independent of my most unaffected anxiety to satisfy your 
Grace on the subject. There is a strong rumour, or at least a sus- 
picion, that the Whigs are to get Tory accession, — perhaps that of 
the Duke of Wellington. At all events, Lord Fingal, who is in 
attendance on the Queen, writes that Lord Melbourne is perfectly 
satisfied that no change of Administration will take place during the 
ensuing session. We shall see. But, in any event, Ireland has no 
resource save in self-exertion. Three of the provinces are showing 
their conviction of the truth. Ulster, I think, is foremost. 

" I have the honour to be, most respectfully, of your Grace the 
most faithful, humble servant, Daniel O'Connell. 

" Most Rev. Dr MacHale, &c." 






In a letter written from Darrynane about this period 
O'Connell said, " Ireland wants four things — corporate 
reform, an extension of franchise, a due proportion of 
representation, and freedom from the burden of supporting 
the Protestant Church." He further declared that, if these 
wrongs were not redressed, he would devote the residue of 
his life to obtain a repeal of the Union. 

Lord Norbury was murdered on the 19th of January 
1839. He was fairly popular, had no known enemy, and 




the murderer was never discovered. If the crime had 
taken place in England, it would have been a nine days' 
wonder, and nothing more ; as it happened in Ireland, 
it created a sensation, and Government tried to find out a 
cause. No other cause being apparent or known, it was 
at once credited to O'Connell' s agitation. It did not in the 
least matter that there was no connection whatever between 
the alleged cause and the supposed effect. 

The English " Tory" members had at last found a grave 
accusation against Irishmen, which they made to react 
upon the Government in opposition. 

O'Connell was justly indignant, Mr Shaw, the Recorder 
of Dublin, anxious to exalt himself at the expense of his own 
nation, moved for a return of the outrages committed in 
Ireland during the last four years. O'Connell answered 
him iii no measured language. 

" Speeches have been made by four gentlemen, natives of Ireland, 
who, it would appear, come here for the sole purpose of vilifying 
their native land, and endeavouring to prove that it is the worst 
and most criminal country on the face of the earth. (Loud cries of 
' Oh ! ' from the Tories.) Yes ; you came here to calumniate the 
country that gave you birth. It is said that there are some soils 
which produce enormous and crawling creatures — things odious and 
disgusting. (Loud cheers from the Tories.) Yes ; you who cheer — 
there you are — can you deny it 1 Are you not calumniators 1 
(Cries of ' Oh ! ' and hisses.) Oh ! you hiss, but you cannot sting. 
I rejoice in my native land ; I rejoice that I belong to it ; your 
calumnies cannot diminish my regard for it ; your malevolence 
canuot blacken it in my esteem ; and although your vices and 
crimes have driven its people to -outrage and murder — (order) — yes ; 




I say your vices and crimes. (Chair, chair.) Well, then, the 
crimes of men like you have produced these results. . . . Fourteen 
murders have occurred in Ireland since the 16th of November. 
England since that period has presented twenty-five ; yet no English 
member has arisen to exclaim, ' What an abominable country ia 
mine ! What shocking people are the people of England ! ' To 
these you may add two cases of supposed murder, thirteen of per- 
sonal violence, and not less than twenty incendiary fires one of 

which, by the way, was at Shaw, in Berkshire." 

On the 21st of March, Lord Koden, a violent Orangeman, 
moved for a select committee to inquire into the state of 
Ireland with regard to the commission of crime. 2 

There was another cause besides " hunger " for Irish 
discontent. It was the aggressions and violence of Orange- 
men like Lord Roden, who first excited party feeling, coun- 
tenanced, if they did not sanction, Orange meetings ; and 
then walked coolly into Parliament, and asked for an in- 
quiry into the cause of Irish discontent. 

Lord Roden got his committee, but he did not get much 
advantage thereby. Mr Drummond was then Chief-Secre- 
tary in Ireland, and his evidence went to show that Orange 
Lodges were the fruitful sources of evil and discord. 3 



^ 2 An English writer says, " The poor peasant, with his emaciated 
features, hungry eyes, and murderous bludgeon, is, naturally enough, 
ready to try the desperate chance of revolt. Till he is transformed into 
a well-fed, and, as a consequence, gay and happy being, there is no hope 
for Ireland." — Memoir of Thomas Drummond, vol. i. p. 242. 

3 Mr Drummond was, we believe, the first English official in Ireland 
who ever attempted to restrain Orange justices of the peace from giving 
open offence to their Catholic fellow-subjects.— Life of Drummond, p. 297° 

2t 



LETTERS TO DR MACE ALE. 



The following letters, which passed between his Grace 
the Archbishop of Tuam and O'Connell during the year 
1839, are of the deepest interest : — 

" Mkrkion Sqdake, 3d January 1839. 

" My EVER-RESPECTED Lord, — I have read, and return your 
Grace, the copy of Mr Vigor's letter. I was aware that the Liberals 
of the county of Carlow had strongly testified to Captain Gleeson's 
services. Nay, Mr Drumniond admitted to me that they had certi- 
fied that he — Captain Gleeson — had prevented much bloodshed ; 
as far as Carlow is concerned, his case cannot be made stronger. All 
I can do for him is to endeavour to prevail on the Government to 
give him some office in substitution of that which he has been de- 
prived of. I told him the only plan which could assist me with 
that view — namely, the procuring a memorial most numerously and 
respectably signed in his favour. I do not know that such memo- 
rial will have the desired effect, but I do know that without it 
nothing can be done. 

"I could obtain an investigation — that is, I believe I could obtain 
an investigation — but that there is one decisive fact to warrant the 
dismissal of this unfortunate gentleman, which is admitted most 
distinctly by himself, and, indeed, cannot possibly be denied ; 
namely, his publication in the newspapers of the most peremptory 
contradiction of O'Malley — a species of publication most emphati- 
cally prohibited by the printed rules of the service. How, then, can 
I talk of investigation, when I am met by this plain proposition 1 
Suppose every other charge disproved, here is one of the gravest 
admitted, and only palliated by showing the truth of the matter 
published ; but the publication itself, not its truth or falsehood, is 
the offence. It seems to me that there is no reply. I wish I could 
prevail on your Grace to believe me when I tell you the real situa- 
tion of the Ministry. In the hope that you will give proper weight 
to my testimony, I repeat it. Some of the Ministry, including Lord 
John llussell, are anxious to retire with honour; with the exception 



''s> ;' 






fe 



aSPl 



of Lord Melbourne himself, perhaps there is not one tenacious of 
office. 

"There is lately another element. It is the fearful state of Eng- 
land, which makes it impossible to change the Administration. The 
Tories could not, and would not— that is, the leading and national 
Tories, Wellington, Peel, '&&— would not accept office at present. 
Even if Connaught, or all Ireland, were to abandon the Ministry 
neither the threat nor the fact would have the least influence on any 
Government measure. They are sure of gaining three Tories for 
every Irishman they may lose. There never was anything more 
hopeless than to attempt to bully them. / know it from experience. 
I have tried it, and totally failed. I never will try it again— at least, 
until there is a change in our prospects. 

'•I do not, my respected Lord, presume to interfere with Connaught 
politics. Connaught has been neglected and vilified by the Railway 
Commissioners ; you have in your last letter shown that it has been 
almost equally neglected by the Education Commissioners. It was 
the province from which, in the Emancipation struggle, we received 
the least and the last assistance ; and now that the rest of Ireland is 
engaged, more or less, in another movement, with the exception of 
Galway, Connaught omits to join. This may be all quite right, but 
me it afflicts with melancholy. That it should rise in an effort 
for Captain Gleeson would give me great pleasure; because, al- 
though I think a struggle with and for Ireland would be more useful 
as well as more dignified, yet any political exertion is better than 
torpor or acquiescence. Ireland has never acted together since 
the close of the Emancipation fight, and she never again will com- 
bine in a simultaneous exertion until the happy day shall, if ever it 
shall cume, when we shall be on the eve of another and a greater 
political victory. But it is vain to hope for combination from Con- 
naught until your judgment goes with us in our struggles. It is 
not by mere neutrality, or even passive countenance, that we can be 
aided by your Grace. You do not think with us, or you would act 
with us. So far from stating this as matter of complaint, I tender 



my respectful approbation of the line of conduct you pursue, 
because I am convinced it is the dictate of a mind of the highest 
order, and of a heart full of the purest love of country and of 
religion. 

" I trust your Grace will pardon me this lengthened trespass. I 
will conclude by assuring you that I do not deprecate any attack, 
however violent or powerful, on the present Ministry. I love them 
not — I respect them little indeed — but I support them to keep out 
the Tories ; and if it shall happen, as events portend, that a coali- 
tion Ministry shall be formed, you will probably have me in direct 
opposition before the end of the ensuing session. 

" I have the honour to be, with profound veneration and respect, 
my dear Lord, of your Grace the most faithful, attached, and 
humble servant, DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

" Most Kev. Dr MacHale, &c." 




" Mermon Square, 4th April 1839. 

"My dear and ever-respected Lord, — May I congratulate 
your Grace that a term has arrived to the fiction of an anti-Catholic 
successor to the Catholic St Jarlath, and that even the name of 
Archbishop of Tuam is blotted from the vocabulary of heresy. 

" I am tremblingly alive to the importance of the subject on 
which I sit down to write to you — -one effort more to procure your 
countenance to the junction of Connaught to the general exertions 
of the rest of Ireland. Hitherto that province contented itself 
with great and striking, but only occasional efforts, to aid the great 
cause, and strike down the common enemy ; and it was not until 
after we had sent G. M'Donnell on a foreign mission that we 
obtained any substantial assistance from that province. There were 
then, as there are now, some excellent reasons for good men to 
differ ; but now we want union and the assistance of each other 
more than we did then, when the English bigotry was not near as 
much roused as it is now. 

" There is at present one ingredient which seems to operate against 



' Precursor ' co-operation from Connaught, and it is this — the con- 
demnation of the national education scheme by your Grace, which 
would require parochial contributions for the purposes of education, 
and, as an apparent consequence, the prevention of any part of the 
funds of any parish being diverted into the ' Precursor ' treasury. 
On this subject, however, I can say — ' Experto crede Roberto.' I 
can give your Grace the result of thirty years and more of experience, 
and it is this — that once get a parish into a mood of contributing to 
public purposes, the more such purposes are brought before them, 
the more liberal will be each aggregate contribution. So many 
persons will not give pounds or five shillings, but many more will 
give one shilling. It will and has uniformly become a habit to con- 
tribute, and thus a Precursor subscription would, according to my 
experience, augment your school contributions. 

" At least, results of this description have followed in almost every 
other instance. The fact is, the great resource even for collecting the 
revenues of the state is to be found in the multiplication of small sums. 

" The contributors should individually be solicited to give sums 
smaller than each could reasonably afford. 

" The peril of a Tory restoration is very eminent, and every one 
opinion is, that upon a new election the Liberal members for Ireland 
would little exceed forty. 

" The Tories in England would be greatly augmented. The Eng- 
lish people are essentially Tory, and nothing preserves us from 
actual persecution but the numbers and the moral energy of the 
Irish people. It is with this conviction I venture once again to 
solicit, or at least to suggest, your leading Connaught into the contro- 
versy by joining the organisation of our Precursors. 

" We may, and I believe will, have a majority on Lord John's 
motion, but he will infallibly break up the Administration within 
twelve months. He is tired and disgusted with office, and would 
personally be glad we were defeated on the ensuing debate. We 
are arrived at portentous times. We are arrived at times in which 
persecution may again raise its head ; and, at all events, there would 
appear to be no safety save in perfect union amongst ourselves. 



^2 

• XI. 



, % 



pi. 







"Tuam, 16th April 1S39. 
" My dear Mr O'Connell, — I have been in receipt of your last 
esteemed favour, and beg to return you my sincere thanks for your 
very kind congratulations. However, it must be owned, though the 
name of Protestant Archbishop is abolished, together with the 
bishoprics of the Establishment, much, if not all, of that remains 
which has been the bitter source of the misfortunes of Ireland. Not 
only are the temporalities of the Establishment secured, but they 
are also so disposed of in sending missionaries and Scripture-readers 
through the country, as to give much annoyance to the Catholic 
people. In short, the spirit of religious ascendency and intolerance 
still prevails, and were it not under some check from the popular 
influence, it would manifest itself in a still more offensive manner. 
Nay, in the provisions made for educating the people, the bigotry 
that so long cursed Ireland is not at all concealed. It is attempted 
to supersede the exercise of the most ordinary duties of the pastors, 
and to hand over the education of the Catholics of Ireland to a 
board composed of the ancient enemies of our country and of our 
faith, and some Catholics, a portion of whom care but very little for 
the practical observances of religion as connected with the education 
of Catholic children. It is this state of things, as well as the marked 
insult and injustice with which their province in particular is treated, 
that makes the people of Connaught so indifferent in joining the 
Precursors' Society. There can be no hope of that justice for which 
the people are struggling. While the ascendency of the Protestant 
Establishment is left in full vigour, without active strenuous exer- 
tions to abate all mischief, it is my sincere conviction that it will 
be difficult to concentrate the national spirit, such as it was in the 
Catholic associations. The people require progressive improvement 
in legislation, as well as a fair administration of the laws. With- 






id 



^m 



out a sure prospect of such improvement, and, above all, without a 
hope that the religious ascendency which is still felt will be put an 
end to. 

" Without this entire religious equality the foundations of justice 
cannot be laid. If the people do not obtain an enlargement of 
their civil rights, they and their pastors should be left the free 
enjoyment of their religious rights, without an attempt to subject 
them to an unhallowed combination of religious bigotry and politi- 
cal despotism. It is not really the mode for any Administration to 
secure the confidence and support of a people who. much as they 
value their civil rights, value their religion more. Still we have all 
done our duty during this crisis, and raised our voice in protesting 
against the sanguinary demonstrations of the Tories. Yet if the 
system of politics is not changed, you may rely on it the name of 
Whigs or Radicals will have no charm, and the people, tired of pro- 
mise s not fulfilled, will abandon them to their fate. Their only 
chance of a permanent continuance in power is a firm determina- 
tion to do justice to Ireland, which is incompatible with its ecclesi- 
astical establishments and the present religious inequality of ita 
people. I hope the Ministers will take a salutary lesson from the 
difficulties into which their feeble policy has thrown them, and that 
you will be enabled, if you hope for the free, generous, and uncal- 
culating aid of the nation, to enlarge your demands upon the Go- 
vernment, and to insist on those rights respecting religious equality 
of which every Administration appears equally attentive, and which 
the great body of the people are most anxious to obtain. I cannot 
omit this opportunity of thanking you most sincerely for your zeal 
in behalf of Captain Gleeson, which he hopes will be successful in 
doing him justice." 

" October 15, 1839. 

" My dear Me O'Connell, — I am just returned from the Island 
of Acliil, where I have been for some time striving to preserve a 
portion of my flock from some thieves who planted themselves 
there, and are using every exertion to traffic by bribing and working 









on the misery of the poor natives. The mission was not cal- 
culated to make me feel any gratitude to the Government, since I 
found that the coastguards were the active agents of those impos- 
tors, notwithstanding that complaints were made by some of the 
Catholic clergy there of such influence. Nay, it appeared after a 
long investigation held some time ago, that their officer took a most 
offensive and unwarrantable part in their anti-Catholic proceedings. 
You perceive, then, how active and untiring is the hostility of our 
enemies to our religion, and how their enormous wealth is still 
made the instrument by which the perversion of the people is 
sought. On the strongest religious grounds, then, as well as politi- 
cal,. I am opposed to the tithes or rent charge, knowing well, as 
long as those who are hostile to our faith can command such a fund, 
they will strive to convert it to the injury of our religion. 

" You need not, therefore, fear any abatement of the agitation 
on that subject. It is here deemed the sum of every other griev- 
ance without the removal of which our agitation would be of little 
avail. It is, therefore, put forth as the most prominent of the 
evils of Ireland. I am delighted that the gentry— the men who in 
general hitherto stood aloof from the contest — have at length em- 
barked in it, resolved to get rid of an impost that involves so much 
their own reputation as well as the interests of their own families. 
This spirit is progressing fast, and has already spread through all parts 
of the province, everywhere reprobating the injustice and cruelty of 
the tithes. On other minor points, as well as the means of obtain- 
ing justice, there is some discrepancy of opinion. This is owing to 
the deep-seated conviction that the present Ministry have not done 
what they were capable of doing for the country. The people think 
it a matter of little importance what may be the profession of their 
rulers, if they find those professions realised in measures to which 
the people are opposed, such as the Tithe Act and poor-laws. I 
fear the Whigs calculate on a full amnesty for all their bad acts, 
because the people hate the Tories. The restoration of clerical 
magistrates, <fec, is not calculated to recall any of the confidence 
which they have forfeited. They are expecting too much. They hope 



for the unqualified support of the people without any pledge on their 
specific measures, for which the people are contending. Even now, 
at the last hour, were they to come forward, and throw themselves 
generously on .the people, and promise such an extension of the 
franchise, an increase of representatives, but, above all, such an im- 
mediate and universal appropriation of the tithes as you mentioned 
in your letter, always respecting the rights of the present incum- 
bents, I am sure that all Ireland would so rally round them as to 
bring dismay into the ranks of the Tories. Without such declara- 
tion on their part, it is my belief the agitation will not be so 
general or successful. Any influence we command with the people 
is founded on the credit they give us for seeing a fair prospect of 
improvement in their condition. We cannot hold out this prospect 
to them unless it is given by our rulers or extracted from their 
fears. I wish you could induce them to give us more confidence. 
If they do not, then the people, relying no longer on their vague 
promises, will rely on their own exertions; the present difference of 
opinion will vanish, and you will find no difficulty in concentrating 
them against either Whigs or Tories. Whether they accede to your 
request or not, you may calculate on general co-operation." 

" Merrion Square, 23c? December 1839. 

" My dear and most esteemed Lord, — If the period we have 
arrived at were not one of singular interest, I should not obtrude 
on your Grace's time or attention. I, however, believe that a crisis 
of deeper interest has not arisen for many years, nor one which, in 
my humble judgment, could be more capable of being converted 
into purposes of such great utility for Ireland. It is this convic- 
tion which emboldens me to ask your Grace for advice and for 
co-operation. 

"The time is come when all Catholic Ireland should rally 

should form a strong and universal combination. 

" The Tories are united ; you perceive that they are daily becom- 
ing less careful to conceal their intentions. They avow their bitter 
hostility to the religion and to the people of Ireland. 



LETTER TO DR MAC HALE. 



" The furious and most sincere of the British Tories avow their 
intention to re-enact the Penal Code, whilst the more wily declare 
their designs not to go farther than to render the Emancipation Act 
a mere dead letter — to leave it on the statute book, but to render 
it totally inoperative in practice. I care little for its not being 
repealed in point of law, if it be repealed in fact and in operation. 
The mainspring of Tory hostility to Ireland is hatred of the 
Catholic religion. This is not to be endured. We cannot suffer 
ourselves to be trampled under the hoofs of the brutal Orangemen 
of either countries. We want protection for the Catholics against 
all parties, Ministerial as well as Tories. My object would be once 
again to organise all Catholic Ireland in an effort of resistance to all 
our enemies. 

" It is proposed by some Catholics of the very moderate party to 
make the basis of our new exertions a declaration that the Catholics 
are now too numerous, possess too much property and intelligence, 
and are too brave to submit to any inferiority in their native land ; 
and, of course, that at the peril of life and fortune they are ready 
to resist by all means within the law and constitution all and every 
oppression. These general principles will include all details, and, 
of course, involve the application of the tithe rent-charge to public 
purposes. I know the education question creates a difficulty in the 
way of general co-operation between the Catholics. But for that I 
should expect the signatures of all the Catholics, prelates, priests, 
and people, to an exceedingly strong declaration of determined 
resistance to the threatened oppression. 

" Would to God I could interfere to have your Grace and Dr 
Murray understand each other — I mean, agree together on the proper 
securities against anti-Catholicism in the plan of general education. 
This wish is, I fear, an idle one, but if your Grace were in Dublin 
I do think something might be done to satisfy your just apprehen- 
sions. The scheme of giving Government dominion over Catholic 
education is failing on the Continent, as the Catholic people grow 
alarmed at its tendency." 





THE REPEAL MOVEMENT PROJECTED-CORRESPONDENCE, EXPLAINING. IDEAS AND 
PLANS, WITH DR MAOHALE— REPEAL ASSOCIATION FORMED— DISOOORAGINQ 
START— REPEAL MEETINGS IN THE SOUTH AND NORTH-GENERAL ELECTION, 
O'CONNELL UNSEATED—ELECTED LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN-ATTACKED BT 
SHREWSBURT-THE REPEAL YEAR, par excdlence-THE ASSOCIATION, TERMS 
OF MEMBERSHIP AND CARD-PEEL AND REPEAL-MONSTER MEETINGS AT 
ENNIS AND MULLAGHMAST-EUROPEAN FAME-o'cONNELL AND THE SOCIETT 
OF FRIENDS— LETTERS TO DR MACHALE. 



r ^ 



,V/: 



/i<? 



^N Christmas Eve 1839, O'Con- 

nell -wrote a letter to the 

| $ i §M Archbishop of Tuam, of which 

but a fragment remains; ret 
that fragment is all-important— 
^ is in itself almost an epitome of 

the life of this illustrious Irishman, now 
drawing to its close. In this fragment 
we find the following words : — 

"We have ourselves to fight- the battle of Ireland 
and Catholicity against the Orange and Tory faction. 
I am tremblingly alive to the part you will take. Your 
co-operation would, in my mind, be quite decisive of 
success. Of course, I will not take, or allow to be 
taken, any step inconsistent with law; nor would I ask 
that your Grace should commit yourself one inch 
beyond your own inclination ; but I do want your 



countenance — your something more than mere acquiescence — the 
larger that more is the better. Indeed, I do believe the fate of 
Catholic Ireland is now in your hands. If we had you going with 
us in the strength of your judgment, there would arise a combina- 
tion more powerful than the old Catholic Association." 

O'Cormell began life with a denunciation of the Union; 
he ended it with a cry for Repeal. He could not know, 
indeed, that he had but a few years to live, that his span of 
life was nearly over ; but he must have felt it. He was a 
hale old inau certainly, but he was to die. He had one of 
those fine old-fashioned constitutions which are extinct 
like the dodo ; but the best constitution in the world will 
not last for ever, because it is only created for time. 

It was characteristic of the man that he should have set 
to work at the Repeal movement when he was near his 
threescore years of life, and at the end of forty years of 
such incessant work as few men had ever gone through. 

Ou the 8th of April 1840, he wrote to his friend Dr 
MacHale to explain his plans, and telling him all his hopes 
and fears. 

Private. 

" London, 8th April 1840. 

" My ever- venerated and dear Loud, — Whenever I have 
formed the intention of making a great popular movement, or a 
movement which I hoped to be great, I have in latter times taken 
the liberty of announcing my intentions to your Grace in the strong 
wish to obtain the aid of your giant mind and national influence. 
In this I have not been very successful. I got from you much 
excellent and very wise advice ; but active co-operation you thought 
it fit not to give me. I bow with submissive respect to the judg- 




ment which induced you to decline— I would not, and I could not, 
say to refuse me— that co-operation. I have neither the right nor 
the inclination to complain of your decision. If you were not as 
free as air to act or not to act, I would not be guilty of the great 
presumption of addressing your Grace on political subjects at all, or 
in any contingency. 

" With these sentiments, embodied as they are with the most 
profound respect, I now lay before your Grace my present plan. 
It is this : — 

" To organise ' A Justice or Repeal ' Association. The justice I 
require branches itself into four different heads of grievance. 

"1st, The payment and support by the State in Ireland of the 
Church of the minority of the Irish people. This is the first, the 
greatest of our grievances. 

" 2d, The omission to give the Irish full corporate reform. 
" 3d, The omission to give the Irish people the same political 
franchises which the people of England enjoy. 

" 4th, The omission to give the people of Ireland an adequate 
share of parliamentary representation. 

" The association I propose will organise, I hope, the Irish people 
to insist on the redress— the full redress— of these grievances from 
the Imperial Parliament ; and if not speedily and fully granted by 
that Parliament, then from a restored domestic Legislature. 

" I was to have a provincial meeting in Connaught, to oppose 
Stanley's Bill, and to promote the association I have above sketched. 
But I will not invade your province without your previous sanction, 
or at least your previous assent. I hope to find a letter from you 
before me on Monday next at Merrion Square. 

" You were in your former letters pleased to labour with me to 
use my influence with the present Ministry to adopt a more liberal 
course of legislation in Ireland, or I should say for Ireland; and you 
conveyed the idea to my mind that I ought to obtain from the 
Government that adoption by menacing to desert them at their need, 
and to allow the Tories to put them out. It was in vain that I 
assured your Grace that the leading men of the present Ministry, 



f|fl 




EXPLANATION 01 PLANS. 



and especially Lord John Kussell, desire, anxiously desire, an hon- 
ourable opportunity of giving up power. They do not cling to it, 
believe me — I do beg of you to believe me, for I know the fact — 
they do not cling to office with any tenacity that would make such 
a menace of the slightest avail. Now do, my dear and most revered 
Lord, believe me, that this is the simple fact. Nay, they menace me 
to resign unless I satisfy them in my conduct. Under these cir- 
cumstances, is it too much for me to ask your Grace to believe me 
that I am utterly unable to influence the Government? I implore 
of you to have this ingredient in your mind in coming to any deter- 
mination, that I cannot possibly persuade the Ministry to adopt or 
reject any particular measure, or to take any particular course. It 
is true that I have already written to this effect to your Grace, but 
alas ! you seemed not to credit my assertion ; and now I respect- 
fully solicit an answer, if you think fit to write to me at all. Do 
you believe me when I say I am utterly powerless in respect to 
influencing, persuading, or in any way affecting the acts of the 
Ministry? 

" My own private and confidential opinion is, that the Tories 
will soon, very soon, be in office. One reason why I wish to 
organise Ireland is this conviction. 

" Give me any, even the slightest, hint that you see any incon- 
venience Ih my going into Connaught, and I will not approach its 
borders. One unhappy event, on the other hand, has prevented the 
Irish people from having the ' power of the West ' with them. I 
blame nobody. If anybody be to blame, I am probably the man. 
I certainly know no person in that province who ought to share any 
such blame. Nor do I, nor can I possibly, either directly or in- 
directly, allude to any other circumstance, or to what may have 
happened in the unquestionably conscientious discharge of any 
duty. 

" I do, in conclusion, implore your Grace to forgive me for this 
intrusion. It is indeed dictated by the most sincere respect, the 
most unqualified veneration, and the not culpable anxiety to stand 
well in your judgment as a public man and as a Christian. 





"I have the honour to be, venerated Lord, of your Grace the 
most faithful humble servant, 

" Daniel O'Connell. 
" The Most Rev. the Archbishop of Tuam." 

"April 11, 1840. 

" My dear Me O'Connell, — I have read with deep interest the 
kind letter with which you have honoured me. I am only surprised 
that 3'ou could for a moment imagine that I would be indifferent to 
any communication from such a source. I prize it the more on 
account of your continued personal friendship, nowithstanding my 
apparent, for it is only apparent, apathy in the political transactions 
of the country. If you are not in sufficient possession already of 
the cause, I shall more fully explain it in another letter. We have 
arrived at an awful crisis. Never since you embarked in the cause 
of your country and religion were your exertions more required in 
vindicating the freedom of both. This last measure is the deadliest 
stroke yet aimed at our liberty. Whilst the franchise remained 
there was yet hope for a peaceful assertion of our rights ; take 
that away and the people are left without any arms in their 
hands, and in this defenceless posture again ready for any experi- 
ment of slavery or despotism. The protection, nay the extension 
of the franchise, is a common cause, on which there should be no 
controversy. All Ireland should shout its reprobation of those 
wlio would thus attempt to take from the honest man the shield 
and the sword of his freedom. Already have there been meetings 
in this part of the country denouncing this infamous measure, and 
not forgetting those who were absent from the division. It is 
worthy of the hatred of Stanley for Ireland. I shall cheerfully give 
you all the assistance in my power ; and when you come to Con- 
naught to hold your meeting, how delighted shall I be if you honour 
again with } T our presence my humble mansion. 

'• You cannot ' invade ' any part of Ireland. For you, at least, 
the boundaries of dioceses and provinces should disappear. It is 
only against the heretics and the Sasseuachs, for I really have no 

2 U 



m 



U: 



/.<v 



LETTERS TO DR M A CHILE. 



relish for the ascendency pretensions of either, that I proclaim the 
inviolability of my spiritual territories. But as you have never 
been the abettor of either, you have a right to come as the conqueror 
of civil and religious liberty into all parts of Ireland, and to receive 
the heartfelt homage of its grateful people. Ireland must now be 
awakened to its duty, and fully impressed with the conviction that 
it is not on Whig nor Tory nor Eadical it is to rely, for they are all 
hostile to our holy religion, but on our own concentrated efforts, 
which alone can save us from the despotism to which we shall other- 
wise be doomed. Come, then, among us as early as you can find it 
convenient, and you will have a ceivl inille failthe. 

" Wishing you renewed energies for the increased struggles that 
shall await you, I have the honour, &c, 

" ■(" MacHale." 

On the 16th of July O'Connell wrote again, aud more 
fully, on the subject so near his heart. 

Private. 

" Merrion Square, \btk July 1840. 

" My DEAR AND VENERATED Lord, — You have probably been 
witnessing, at least occasionally, in the newspapers, my progress. If 
so, you will have seen that I have devoted myself to the restoration 
of the Irish Parliament — a matter of difficulty, but an impossibility 
only to those who will not take the proper means to overcome the 
difficulty. 

" I have placed, as the master grievance to be redressed by the 
Repeal of the Union, the payment by the nation of the Church of 
the minority. 

" I am convinced that there is no mode of attaining this object 
but through the Repeal agitation. 

" Of course your Grace will not mistake me so far as to suppose 
that I obtrude these opinions as presuming to call for your assent. 
1 simph suite them to be understood as to the principles on which 
I act, being (as I am) convinced that, if there be not a combined 



Y".-' 



I 

} i 



LETTERS TO DR MAC HALE. 



effort made by the Irish people, Stanley's bill will be carried into 
law in the next session. The effect will be to repeal in substance 
the Reform and the Emancipation Acts. 

" I propose to contribute to the development of the public senti- 
ment by attending provincial meetings during the vacation. Of 
course I will not invade Connaught without the assent of your 
Grace, and, indeed, I should say without your co-operation. I pro- 
pose Tuam as the place — the time I would leave to your Grace, if 
you shall be so kind as to assist me ; and you must perceive that I 
am incapable of fixing on Tuam without your approbation. My 
object would be to forward the Repeal, if that were practicable, but, 
if not, to confine the object to these four — 

" 1st, Petitions for the extinction or public appropriation of the 
tithe rent-charge. 

" 2d, Petitions for the extension of the elective franchise in 
Ireland. 

" 3d, Petitions against any bill on the principle of Lord Stanley's 
bill' 

"4th, Petitions for full corporate reform. 

" Those who choose to assist in the Repeal, and to declare them- 
selves Repealers, would have an opportunity of doing so. Put I 
confess 1 should desire a Repeal resolution of the provincial meet- 
ing, if attainable. 

" An organisation by parishes for the purposes of carrying the 
above objects into effect would be very desirable. 

" In short, if we had the Repeal — 

" Religion would be free. 
" Education would be free. 
" The press would be free. 

" No sectarian control over Catholics ; no Catholic control over 
sectarians — that is, no species of political ascendency. 

" The law would, of course, sanction in the fullest measure the 
spiritual authority of the Episcopal order over religious discipline 
amongst Catholics, including Catholic education. 

" These are plans of great importance.. I think I could, with 



il 



'<._••-« <*, *C S 




support from a chosen few, comparatively speaking, carry them 
into full effect. 

" I go specially to Mayo, / believe — certainly to Galway. I have 
the honour to be, with profound respect, of your Grace the obedient 
servant, Daniel O'Connell. 

" His Grace the Archbishop of Tuani." 



" Castlebar, 25th. July 1S40. 

" My dear and venerated Lord, — I received your admirable 
letter with the greatest pleasure and gratitude ; all is safe now; we 
will work the great question of questions until it becomes too big 
for English opposition. I have the strongest confidence in complete 
and not remote success. What I propose relative to the provincial 
meeting is founded on your letter, and it is this — that it should be 
held at Tuam on the second Monday in August, which will be the 
10th. The Galway assizes will be quite over, and the return from 
the assizes will enable many without inconvenience to come to 
Tuam. I will prepare a requisition here, and get it signed for that 
day. I will send a copy to your Grace, and if it meets your ap- 
proval, we will put our shoulders to the wheel for that day. 

" It is vain to expect any relief from England. All parties there 
concur in hatred to Ireland and Catholicity ; and it is also founded 
in human nature that they should, for they have injured us too 
much ever to forgive us. 

" I have the honour to be, my Lord, of your Grace the most 
respectful faithful, servant, 

" Daniel Connell. 

"The Most Rev. the Archbishop of Tuam." 



" Herbion Square, 30(A July 1840. 

" My very dear and respected Lord, — We have launched the 

Repeal cause well in Connaught, ten thousand thousand thanks 

to your Grace. But well begun will not alone do. We must 

follow it up well for the provincial meeting. Mure depends oiuthe 




LETTERS TO DR MAC HALE. 



677 



success of that meeting than I can describe. If we make an im- 
pression by the magnitude and respectability of that meeting, the 
result will be most favourable on the other provinces, and having 
the three provinces with us, we shall easily procure a great portion 
of Ulster, perhaps more than may be imagined by those who look 
only at the surface. 

"That being the reverse of the case of your Grace, I look with 
the utmost confidence to your decided and energetic support at 
the approaching provincial meeting. 

" Thfi first thing — a most important thing it is— necessary, is to 
have a requisition as numerously and as respectably signed as pos- 
sible. For this, I must depend mainly on your Grace. It will, my 
Lord, require activity and energy which you (blessed be God !) pos- 
sess; but it will require time which, amidst your great and important 
duties, you cannot well spare, and yet, I trust that this is one of 
those duties, or at all events that its tendency is to promote the 
greatest and best of them. I do, therefore, venture to solicit your 
active co-operation. 

"You will at once get Lord Ffrench's signature and that of his 
son's, perhaps, brother's. Blake, the member for Galway, will, I 
know, be guided by you. He is at times sturdy, but he is a truly 
honest man— honest to the heart's core, and a faithful Catholic. 
In short, he will, if you deem it right to ask or advise him, give 
his hearty co-operation. 

" The Ulster meeting will take place the day after ours. I should 
be so proud to beat them in everything. Copies of the requisition 
should be sent round the counties to get additional names, and all 
may be collected at the close of the first week of the Assizes of 
Galway. 

" Excuse me for being thus tediously particular, but I am most 
thoroughly convinced that the Repeal alone can keep secure the 
religion and the liberties of the Irish people. 

"The insilious machinations of the enemies of both can be coun- 
teracted successfully only by an Irish legislation. 



w 



M 




" I have determined not to go into Galway until Sunday after- 
noon. 

" I have the honour to be, with profound respect, my dear Lord, 
of your Grace the most faithful and devoted servant, 

" Daniel O'Connell. 

" To the Most Rev. the Archbishop of Tuam." 

O'Connell founded the Repeal Association on the 15th 
of April 1S40. The first meeting was held at the Corn 
Exchange,- and he thus explained his reasons for select- 
ing this place : — 

"At the outset of the old Catholic Association, I inspected various 
places — amongst others, Holme's Commercial Mart, on Usher's 
Island — with a view to procure a suitable apartment. I learned 
that if I should select any unprotected site, it was the purpose of the 
anti-Catholic students of Trinity College to muster in full force, and 
endeavour, at least, to expel the Catholic associators by physical 
violence. I accordingly looked out for a room in such a neighbour- 
hood as might deter the College lads from making their proposed 
attempt. Of course they would, under any circumstances, have 
been worsted ; but it might have in some measure injured our 
cause had the meetings been liable to disturbance, and had any 
of them broken up in a riot. The Corn Exchange possessed the 
advantage of being in the close vicinity of at least 150 coal porters 
every day in the week, who would have thrown the College lads 
into the Liffey in case of any effort to disturb the proceedings. 
Tliis circumstance was known to the intending aggressors, and the 
salutary knowledge effectually checked their projects of intrusion." 

The commencement was not very encouraging. The 
chair was taken by John O'Niel of Fitzwilliam Square, a 
steadfast patriot ; but O'Connell waited for nearly an hour 
after the time named for the opening of the meeting, and yet 



DISCO UR A G A' J/ AW TS A T FIRST. 



there was but a handful of people in the room. There were 
several reasons for this. O'Connell had been obliged, for 
many years of his life, to devote himself to stirring up the 
spirit of his compatriots, to exciting their hopes, to firing 
their ambition, to rousing them from the torpor of despair, 
into which they had been thrown by reiterated failures. He 
had roused them, and he had shown them that some mea- 
sure of justice could be attained by perseverance, by energy, 
by reiterated demands. It was but natural that the sons 
of those men whom he had so aroused should look a little 
beyond their father, should desire more, should be more 
eager to attain it ; and not having personal knowledge of 
an unsuccessful rebellion, should be disposed to fight for 
liberty, as apparently a quicker method of obtaining it than 
by agitating. They had a good deal of pluck, a good deal 
of daring, a good deal of hopefulness, and a very limited 
supply of worldly wisdom. They did not care to lie-- for 
Repeal. If O'Connell had proposed fighting for it, thev 
would have been ready. Again, there was a multitude 
who were indifferent, who could not see any immediate 
personal benefit to accrue from Repeal ; and again there 
were many who thought O'Connell was not in earnest. 

But he was not a man to be daunted by difficulties, and 
he opened his meeting as easily as if thousands had been 
present. These words, he said, shall be inscribed on my 
tomb, " He died a Repealer." They have not been inscribed 
there ; yet, for all that, the Repeal movement prospered. 



There were several reasons for this. First, O'Connell's 
name was sufficient to make any Irish movement prosper ; 
and when it was known or believed that he was in earnest, 
thousands enrolled themselves under his banner. Second, 
England was in a state of chronic disturbance, and 
O'Connell believed that England's difficult}' was Ireland's 
opportunity. English statesmen were too busy with their 
own affairs, to do more than open and read the private corres- 
pondence of O'Connell and his friends as it passed through 
the post office. 4 Thirdly, the Temperance movement, which 
had been inaugurated by Father Matthew, was a most 
powerful auxiliary to O'Connell's agitation, for the people 
had learned to assemble in thousands, to enjoy themselves 
innocently, and to separate without disturbance and blood- 
shed. 5 

Sir Eobert Peel came into office at the close of the year 
1841. O'Connell has often been accused of coalescing with 
the Whigs. He may have done so ; but as he took neither 
place nor pension, his motives must have been disinte- 
rested. During the years 1840 and 1843, O'Connell devoted 
himself to promoting the Repeal Association by holding 



* Lord Brougham spoke on the state of England; in Parliament, " as 
being full of discontent and afflicted with distresses." — Lve of Lord 
Bingham, p. 511. The Chartist agitation was then at its height. 

6 It need scarcely be observed that Father Matthew kept himself 
sacredly aloof from politics; and was rather displeased than gratified 
when O'Connell insisted on joining one of his processions in Cork. — 
Life ofFatlier Matth w, by J. /•'. Maguire, Esq., M.P., p. 43G. 



RECEPTION AT LIMERICK. 



631 



M 



mass meetings in various parts of Ireland. The London 
Examiner had compared the Repeal movement to the cry 
of the Darrynane beagles. " Yes," observed O'Connell, 
"but he made a better hit than he intended, funny beagles 
never cease their cry until they catch their game." 

In the autumn of 1840, O'Connell held a repeal meet- 
ing at Cork. He was met by thousands who tried to take 
the horses from his carriage and draw him into the city in 
triumph, but he would not permit it. 6 The meeting was 
held at Batty's Circus, and the utmost enthusiasm was dis- 
played. The Liberator next proceeded to Limerick, where 
it is said that he was met by a multitude little short of 
100,000 persons. The ship-carpenters had got up a kind 
of pageant. They had a boat on wheels, in which Neptune 
sat with his trident, attired in a sea-green costume. He 
rose when O'Connell approached, and made him a speech, 
to which O'Connell replied with his usual quick wit, by 
saying " he felt quite refreshed by receiving an aquatic 
compliment on the dusty high road." He addressed the 
people in George's Street, opposite to Cruise's Hotel, 
and from thence he proceeded to the Treaty Stone, where 
Steele spoke, in his usual vehement style. In the even- 



6 When they proceeded to undo the harness, O'Connell cried out in 
great excitement, » No ! no ! no ! I never will let men do the business 
ot horses if I can help it ! Don't touch that harness, you vagabonds ! I 
an, trying to elevate your position, and I will not permit you to degrade 
yourselves ! "—Personal Recollections, vol. i. p. 88. 



"A PAIR OF ROGUES." 



ing the whole party were entertained at dinner in the 
theatre. 7 

At Ennis there was an assembly of fifty thousand men. 
As the party returned to Dublin, O'Connell pointed out 
the place where Mr M'Nally, the son of a barrister, had 
been robbed of a large sum. He had to levy the amount 
off the county to indemnify himself. 

" ' A pair of greater rogues than father and son never lived,' said 
O'Connell; and the father was busily endeavouring to impress upon 
every person he knew a belief that his son had been really robbed. 
Among others, he accosted Parsons, then M.P. forthe King's County, 
in the hall of the Four Courts. ' Parsons ! Parsons, my dear 
fellow ! ' said old Leonard, ' did you hear of my son's robbery 1 ' — 
' No,' answered Parsons, quietly, ' I did not — whom did he rob?'" 

On the 14th of October a repeal meeting was held at 
Kilkenny, at which it was calculated 200,000 persons 



7 " O'Connell's usual travelling companions during the busiest period 
of the agitation, were Dr Gray, proprietor of the Freeman's Journal ; 
Richard Barrett, proprietor of the Pilot; Robert Dillon Browne, M.P. 
for Mayo ; Mr Steele, Mr Ray (the secretary of the Association), John 
O'Connell, and Charles O'Connell, of Ennis. I often formed one of the 
travelling party until 1843 ; but in that year so many meetings sprang 
\ip, which I was deputed to attend on the part of the Association, that 
I found it nearly impossible to accompany O'Connell to any of the 
celebrated ' monster ' assemblages. For instance, on the very day of the 
enormous Tara meeting, at which 1,200,000 were assembled, I attended 
a meeting at Clontibret, in the county Monaghan, where an experi- 
enced reporter computed that 300,000 persons were present. Such a 
gathering would at any other time have excited a good deal of public 
notice ; but it was quite thrown into the shade by the unprecedented 
muster which O'Connell addressed on the same day at Tara." — Personal 
Recollections, vol. i. p. 80. 



\Mi 



Wl 



Q : 



#i 



PUBLIC ENGAGEMEXTS. 



were present, 20,000 of whom were on horseback. On this 
occasion, when speaking of the Penal Code, O'Connell 
said : — 

" Your priesthood were hunted and put to death ; yet your 
hierarchy has remained unbroken — a noble monument of your faith 
and your piety. The traveller who wanders over Eastern deserts, 
beholds the nwjestic temples of Baalbec or Palmyra, which rear their 
proud columns to heaven in the midst of solitude and desolation. 
Such is the Church of Ireland. In the midst of our political deso- 
lation, a sacred Palmyra has ever remained to us." 

O'Connell's history at this period is but a successive 
record of attendance at public meetings. His engage- 
ments are thus summed up : — 

" Mr O'Connell stands pledged to the following engagements. To 
attend the Repeal Association on the 4th ; to preside at an orphan 
charity dinner on the 5th ; to agitate for Repeal in Mullingar on 
the 7th, in Cork on the 11th, and in Dungarvan on the 13th ; to 
attend a Reform meeting in Dublin on the 15th, and in Belfast on 
the 18th ; on the 19th to attend a Repeal dinner in the same town; 
on the 21st and 22d a Reform meeting and dinner at Leeds; on 
the 23d a Reform meeting at Leicester ; and on the 26th to take 
his seat in the House of Commons, attired in his grey frieze Repeal 
coat." 

At the Mullingar meeting he was met by fifty thousand 
persons, and the Right Rev. Dr Cantwell and the Right 
Rev. Dr Higgins, the Bishops of Meath and Ardagh, took 
prominent places in the procession. 

There were disturbances at this time in Limerick, but 
the " Head Pacificator," Tom Steele, was sent down 
with a white flag, edged with green, to make peace. 






These words were inscribed on the flag, " Whoever commits 
a crime adds strength to the enemy." Had O'Connell 
chosen to proclaim himself King or President of Ireland 
at this period, undoubtedly no power could have resisted 
him. The Irish were then a sober nation, and they 
were united in their devotion to the Liberator as they had 
never been, and probably never again will be, to any of 
their leaders. 

In Cork, O'Connell was received with shouts of " Hurrah 
for Repeal ! " 

In Parliament he opposed Mr Stanley's Bill to amend 

the representation in Ireland with singular success. 

" You would now," said he, " refuse to Ireland equality of fran- 
chises with England. What plea do you allege for this refusal ? 
Why, the poverty of Ireland. But mark your inconsistency. AVhen 
I arraigned the Legislative Union as having caused poverty in Ire- 
land, how was I met ? Honourable gentlemen produced multitudi- 
nous statements and calculations to demonstrate that poverty was 
not general in Ireland, that my statements were exaggerated, and 
that the Union had created great general prosperity in that country ! 
You then alleged the prosperity of Ireland as a reason why she 
should not possess legislative independence ; you now allege her 
poverty as a reason why she should not enjoy the franchise V" 

In the early part of this year he visited Belfast, and out- 
witted the Orangeman who had lain in wait to kill him. 
He had been challenged to holda discussion on Repeal with 
the well-known Presbyterian minister, Dr Cooke. " He 
was a fool to send the challenge," said O'Connell, " and I 
would be a fool to accept it." The Repealers of Belfast, 



i 



however, sent hint an invitation, which he accepted. The 
Right Rev. Dr Blake was then Bishop of Dromore, and 
resident in Newry. He knew the virulence of the Orange 
party, and wrote to warn O'Connell. O'Connell took the 
warning; he ordered post-horses all along the road from 
Dublin to Belfast, for Monday the 18th of January, in his 
own name. He got a friend to order post-horses for Satur- 
day the 16th, in the name of C. A. Charles, a well-known 
ventriloquist. O'Connell arrived that night safely in Bel- 
fast, and no doubt enjoyed the joke thoroughly. 

A soiree was given by nearly five hundred ladies of 
different religious opinions, at which the health of O'Con- 
nell was proposed by the distinguished Bishop of Dromore, 
Dr Blake. The Orangemen, however, would not allow the 
proceedings to escape without molestation, and while 
O'Connell was speaking, they flung in a volley of stones, 
smashing windows, and broke chandeliers, though fortu- 
nately only one lady was injured. 

In May 1841, O'Connell attended a meeting of Repealers 
in London, when he was attacked on the old charge of 
using the " Rent " for his own purposes. 8 



8 Many of the English Catholics of the upper class felt very bitterly 
against O'Connell. However they may have condemned the Repeal 
agitation, they should not have forgotten that they owed Catholic 
Emancipation to O'Connell, and to O'Connell's persevering agitation. 
At this period they knew very little of the real state of Ireland, of the 
terrible poverty of the people consequent on higli rents, bad crops, and 
depression of trade. After all, the Repeal agitation was directly bene- 




m 



fas 



0' CONN ELL UNSJEA TED. 



A general election occurred during this year, and O'Connell 
lost his s-eat for Dublin. The exertions of the Tory party, 
who returned West and Grogan, were almost superhuman. 
Voters were taken almost from their very death-beds to 
the polling. Neither money, nor time, nor labour was 
spared. 9 

The Tory party were triumphant, and did not use their 
success very delicately. " Steam," they cried, " has given 



ficial to English Catholics. One of O'Connell's great objects in it, and 
the one for which, in point of fact, he really, worked most earnestly, was 
to obtain the return of Liberal members to Parliament. He broke 
through the iron ring of Tory and Orange exclusiveness which had 
fenced in Irish constituencies from all but their own party. Even 
English Liberal Protestants owe a debt of gratitude to O'Connell 
for this. 

Mr O'Neil Daunt relates the following anecdote : — 

" An Irish priest, who was collecting subscriptions for the erection of 

a Catholic church, applied for this purpose to Lord 

"' Sir,' replied his Lordship, ' I will never give a penny towards any 
purpose for the use of the Irish.' — ' Why so, my Lord 1 ' demanded the 
priest. ' Because,' replied the peer, ' they subscribe £14,000 a-year to 
that O'Connell for coming over here to create riot and disturbance.' 

" ' The ungrateful fellow ! ' exclaimed O'Connell, when the priest re- 
peated Lord ' swords; ' but for me he would not have been eman- 
cipated. And, moreover, I saved him £30,000 by insisting that the 
committee for making the railroad through his property should adhere to 
their original engagement with him, instead of procuring a new Act of 
Parliament to enable them to obtain his ground for £30,000 less than 
the valuation first agreed upon.'" 

3 The events of this election are amongst the earliest recollections of 
the present writer. A very near relative was taken in his carriage, 
though long an invalid, and carried to and from it by four men to vote 
for Grogan. So strong were his feelings, that if he had died in the effort, 
he would have died content. 



"WHISPER IN YOUR EAR, JOHN BULL." 






n i 



H 



us Ireland inextricably clutched within our grip." O'Con- 
nell replied at a public meeting : 

" They threaten us with troops by steam. They say that a few 
hours will land an army here. Steam is a powerful foe — but steam 
is an equally powerful friend. Whisper in your ear, John Bull — 
steam has brought America within ten days' sail of Ireland." 

Neither of the Kembles could have surpassed the dra- 
matic effect with which O'Connell uttered the words, 
" Whisper in your ear, John Bull ; " and the scene of wild 
exultation, of enthusiastic cheering, which followed cannot 
be described. 

On the 1st of November 1841, O'Connell was elected 
Lord Mayor of Dublin. Ever since the English nation had 
apostatised herself, and had v striven by fire and sword to 
compel Ireland to follow her example, she had forced Pro- 
testant governors on a Catholic people. O'Connell was 
indeed worthy to be the first to take the civic chair after 
the Emancipation Act had given it to those who held the 
same religious belief as the great majority of freemen. He 
announced before his election, that though as an individual 
he was a Repealer to the death, yet as the chief magistrate 
he would know no politics, and favour no religion. And he 
kept his word; yet so strong is the force of prejudice that 
thirty years passed over before Ireland was allowed a 
Catholic Lord-Chancellor. 1 

1 The pettiness which manifested itself in obliging O'Connell to be 
re-elected for Clare was also amusingly manifested in the legislative 






Every one was anxious to see how O'Connell would 
acquit himself on his first day in court, and the place was 
crowded to excess. Curiously enough, the first case that 
came before him was a Catholic priest's, whose servant had 
summoned him for arrears of wages. O'Connell gave 
judgment against the priest. 

A few days after O'Connell attended the dinner of St 
Malachi's Orphan Charity ; with his usual felicity of 
expression, he referred to the splendid gold chain of the 
corporation which he wore, saying — 

" I am here, it is true, but an uncanonised Malachi ; I resemble 
the old monarch of that name, of whom the poet sings that 

' Malachi wore a collar of gold !' 
He won it, we are told by the same authority, ' from the proud 
invader ' — whereas I won this from the old rotten corporation of 
Dublin." 

O'Connell was publicly attacked at this period by Lord 
Shrewsbury, but he replied in a most spirited letter. He 
showed, what could not have been denied, and what should 
not have been forgotten, how he had sacrificed himself for 
Ireland : — 

" I flung away the profession — I gave its emoluments to the winds 
— I closed the vista of its honours and dignities — I embraced the 
cause of my country — and, come weal or come woe, I have made a 
choice at which I have never repined, nor ever shall repent. An 



regulations for the Lord Mayor. He could not attend Mass in his 
robes, for as O'Connell observed, " The Mayor may be a CathoUc, but 
his rones mast be Protestant." 



LETTER TO LORD SHREWSBURY. 



event occurred which I could not have foreseen. Once more high 
professional promotion was placed within my reach. The office of 
Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer became vacant. I was offered 
it. Or, had I preferred the office of Master of the Rolls, the alter- 
native was proposed to me. It was a tempting offer. Its value 
was enhanced by the manner in which it was made ; and pre- 
eminently so by the person through whom it was made — the best 
Englishman that Ireland ever saw — the Marquis of Normanby. 
But I dreamed again a day-dream — was it a dream 1 — and I refused 
the offer. And here am I now taunted, even by you, with mean 
and sordid motives. I do not think I am guilty of the least vanity 
when I assert, that no man ever made greater sacrifices to what lie 
deemed the cause of his country than I have done. I care not how 
I may be ridiculed or maligned. I feel the proud consciousness 
that no public man has made greater or more ready sacrifices. Still 
there lingers behind one source of vexation and sorrow — one evil, 
perhaps greater than all the rest. — one claim, I believe, higher than 
any other, upon the gratitude of my countrymen. It consists in the 
bitter, the virulent, the mercenary, and therefore the more envenomed 
hostility towards me which my love for Ireland and for liberty has 
provoked. What taunts, what reproaches, what calumnies have I 
not sustained — what modes of abuse, what vituperation, what 
slander have been exhausted against me — what vials of bitterness 
have been poured on my head — what coarseness of language has not 
been used, abused, and worn out in assailing me — what derogatory 
appellation has been spared — what treasures of malevolence have 
been expended — what follies have not been imputed — in fact, what 
crimes have I not been charged with 1 I do not believe that I ever 
had in private life an enemy. I know that I had and have many, 
very many warm, cordial, affectionate, attached friends. Yet here I 
stand, beyond controversy the most and the best abused man in the 
universal world ! And, to cap the climax of calumny, you come 
with a lath at your side instead of the sword of a Talbot, and you 
throw Peel's scurrility along with your own into my cup of bitter- 






M 




THE REPEAL ASSOCIATION. 



m 



ness. All this have I done and suffered for Ireland. And let her 
be grateful or ungrateful — solvent or insolvent — he who insults me 
for taking her pay, wants the vulgar elements of morality which 
teach that the labourer is worthy of his hire ; he wants the higher 
sensations of the soul which enable one to perceive that there are 
services which bear no comparison with money, and can never be 
recompensed by pecuniary rewards. Yes, I am — I say it proudly — 
I am the hired servant of Ireland ; and I glory in my servitude." 

O'Connell now published his " Memoir of Ireland," and 
concluded the duties of his mayoralty by revising the 
burgess roll of Dublin. This obliged him to examine aud 
determine the claims of 18,000 persons. Wagers were laid 
that no human being could perform the task in the time 
allotted, but O'Connell accomplished it, though every 
obstacle was placed in his way by the opposite party. 

At the commencement of the year 1843, O'Connell an- 
nounced that it should be the repeal year, par excellence. 
The Repeal Association was already formed, and c< insisted 
of three classes — members, associates, and volunteers. The 
associates paid in thirty shillings, and received a small 
card as a token of membership. The members paid one 
pound per annum. The volunteer's card was given to any 
one who paid ten pounds. The card was designed by Mr 
O'Callaghan, the author of the " Green Book." The 
names of the four great battles in which the Irish defeated 
the Danes or English were printed on this card — viz., 
" Clontarf, 1014;" " Beal-au-atha-buidhe, 1598 ; " "Ben- 
burb, 1645;" "Limerick, 1690." The card was adorned 






jvk. 



:<■ 



L s ,' 



with pikes, banners, and columns. On the shaft of the 
left column was this inscription : " Ireland contains 32,201 
geographical square miles. It is larger than Portugal by 
4049 miles ; larger than Bavaria and Saxony united by 
4473 miles ; larger than Naples and Sicily by 409 miles ; 
larger than Hanover, the Papal States, and Tuscany by 
1285 miles ; larger than Denmark, Hesse Darmstadt, and 
the Electorate of Hesse by 9009 miles ; larger than Greece 
and Switzerland by 5565 miles ; larger than Holland and 
Belgium by 13,005 miles; is in population superior to 
eighteen, and in extent of territory superior to fifteen 
European states — and has not a Parliament ! " On the 
shaft of the right column was this inscription : " Ire- 
land has 8,750,000 inhabitants ; has a yearly revenue 
of £5,000,000 ; exports yearly £18,000,000 worth of pro- 
duce ; sends yearly (after paying Government expenses) 
to England £2,500,000 ; remits yearly to absentees, 
£5,000,000 ; supplied, during the last great war^ against 
France, the general and two-thirds of the men and officers 
of the English army and navy ; has a military population 
of 2,000,000— and has not a Parliament ! " 

Nothing could be less interesting than a registration of 
the history of Repeal meetings. Each had its own local 
interest, and its own local influence ; but as the whole 
affair came to a lame and impotent conclusion in conse- 
quence of O'Connell's imprisonment, the record can be of 
little value. In May 1843, the Government testified the 




alarm which had been previously felt. Sir Robert Peel 
was asked by Lord Jocelyn whether the Government in- 
tended taking any steps to suppress the Repeal agitation ? 
Sir Robert emphatically declared his resolution to suppress 
it if he could, but manifestly he had doubts — O'Connell 
knew the law too well. If, however, the law as it stood 
could not put down O'Connell, the law should be amended, 
as had been done before, or at least as had been sug- 
gested, by Mr Perceval. 

O'Connell replied in one of his most enthusiastic 
speeches, — a speech which was printed as a broadside and 
placarded from one end of Ireland to the other. 

" We are told," said he, " that some desperate measures are to be 
taken for the suppression of public opinion upon the question of 
Repeal. I will tell Peel where he may find a suggestion for his 
bill. In the American Congress for the district of Columbia, they 
have passed a law that the House shall not receive any petitions 
from, nor any petitions on behalf of, slaves, even though the peti- 
tioners be freemen ! I shall send for a copy of that Act of the 
Columbian legislature, and send it to Peel, that he may take it as his 
model when he is framing his bill of coercion for the Irish people. 
He shall go the full length of the Coercion Bill if he stirs at all." 

The two most famous meetings, in point of numbers, 
enthusiasm, and hopes, too soon to be dashed to the ground, 
were those held at Tara and Mullaghmast, the one place 
recalling those ancient glories of Erin so dear to Irish 
hearts ; the other the scene of one of the crudest outrages 
on justice ever perpetrated by England against the people of 



fiffil 






w 




The O'Connell Monument at the Irish College at Rorr 




the so-called sister country. The Tara meeting took place 
on the 15th of August 1843. The site being only fifty 
miles from Dublin, was easily reached by cars, and it was 
calculated that 1400 vehicles went thither from Dublin 
alone. There was everything to inspire and inspirit the 
multitude. Bands played along the way, hopes and hearts 
beat high; above all, it Was a holiday of the Church; 
and from early morning until the canonical hour of 
twelve, masses were celebrated at a temporary altar. 
The sacred ceremonies ended, a short sermon was 
preached on temperance, and the Liberator, surrounded 
by thousands and thousands who looked to him as their 
father aud their friend, received a solemn benediction. 
Two bishops, three vicar-generals, and thirty priests were 
on the platform with O'Counell and his friends. The 
Times said that a million of people were present. Yet 
it was here that Ireland's best and noblest son forged 
the spear which pierced his own breast ; it was here that 
O'Connell uttered the words for which he was afterwards 
prosecuted. 

During this year, £48,421 were subscribed for Repeal. 
From the Tuam meeting in March to the Tara meeting in 
August, thirty monster assemblies had been held. O'Con- 
nell was certain — too certain of success. He had arranged 
an admirable plan, but it was illegal, and he vainly en- 
deavoured to frame one which should be legal. He pro- 
posed a " court of three hundred," which, he said, if once 






m 

Mj? 



II 






a 



established, could be easily converted into an Irish Parlia- 
ment, ; but the " if" was in the way. 

The Mullaghmast meeting was held in October, and on 
that occasion O'Connell was crowned by Hogan, the sculptor, 
in an assembly of 400,000 men. Government certainly had 
reason to be alarmed. Europe was ablaze with O'Connell's 
name and fame. He refused his autograph to the King of 
all the Russias, and it was received as a favour by the King 
of Bavaria. 2 A Repeal meeting was held in Paris ; at a 
dinner, M. Arago took the chair, and Ledru Rollin 
proposed a toast, which was received with acclamation — 
" To Ireland, the oppressed, and to France, the enemy of 
all oppression." 

3 The autograph was transmitted through the Rev. W. O'Meara, a 
Fr;iii> iscan friar, and a great friend of the Liberator's. The correspond- 
ence, which we hope to publish in another work, has been lent to us 
by M. Lenihan, Esq., J.P. He has also lent us the autograph reply of 
the King of Bavaria, who prided himself, with some reason, on his 
knowledge of English. It was forwarded to Mr O'Meara by Baron de 
Cetto. 

" Sir, — I have received the letter of the 10th of Sept., with which you 
had the complaicancy (sic) to send me an autograpli of Mr D. O'Connell. 

" These lines, written from the hand of that energetical character, in- 
separable for ever from the history of our age, should not fail in a 
collection of this kind. I request yon to say my thanks especially to 
Mr 1). O'Connell himself, for his kindness in fulfilling my desire in such 
an obliging way. It affords me a pleasure to assure you, sir, of the true 
esteem with which I am your affectionate Lewis. 

"Munich, Oct. 12, 1841. 

"To Rev. William Aloysius O. Meara." 

This letter was sealed with the royal arms, and addressed by the King 
himself. 






M I 






m 



nT.*s> „."27'T>. 



CHALMERS ON O'CONNELL. 



A French lady wrote to O'Connell thus : — 

" A Monsieur O'Connell. 

" Envoi d'une dame fraticaise pour obtenir de lui la faveur d'nn 
de ces autograjihes, qui ne sout refuses, dit on, qu'aux Emp rears ! 

" J. De la Porte. 
" 30 A6ut, 1841, Bourdeaux." 

Mr Daunt gives a curious illustration of his fame at a 

yet earlier period. He says : — 

" One curious illustration of the extent of O'Connell's fame is 
the following definition, in Fliigel's ' German and English Diction- 
ary' (Leipsic, 1827): — 'Agitator, n. an agitator — D. O'Connell 
especially.' 

"In Scotland he found many admirers. Among the most dis- 
tinguished of these was the celebrated Chalmers. Differing widely 
in politics and in religion from O'Connell, Chalmers yet cordially 
admitted his great qualities ; observing to a foreigner — ' He is a 
noble fellow, with the gallant and kindly, as well as the wily genius 
of Ireland. ' 

"On Mr Fitzpatrick's visiting London in 1843, one of the habitues 
of the Stock Exchange said to him — ' Your Daniel O'Connell, .so 
far as the Money Market is concerned, is one of the great powers 
of Europe. His movements have a sensible effect upon the funds.' " 

There was one class of O'Connell's admirers whose ap- 
probation he valued very highly. His own peace principles, 
from which he never swerved for one moment during his 
long career, procured for him the respect of the Society of 
Friends. Mr Daunt says : — 

" There was another description of Dissenters from Catholicity 
with whom O'Connell was on much better terms than with 
the proselyting parsons. These were the Quakers. He undoubt- 
edly was not only attached to many of the Society of Friends, 






O'CONSELL AND THE QUAKERS. 



but lie also admired some of their principles. In both Ireland 
and England he was in the habit of familiar intercourse with cer- 
tain leading members of their sect ; au,d he referred with parti- 
cular pleasure to the compliment paid him by old Joseph Pease, 
who was uncle, I think, to the Quaker member for Durham. That 
good old man had visited him often in London, and one day he 
said at parting, ' Friend O'Connell, I have for many years watched 
thine actions closely ; I have kept mine eye upon thee, and 1 have 
never seen thee do aught that was not honest and useful' ' Truly,' 
said O'Connell, ' it was a satisfaction to my mind to be appreciated 
by that good man. It is consoling that an impartial and intelligent 
observer should do me justice. It makes me amends, if I needed 
any, for a life of labour, and for the vituperation of my enemies.' " 

O'Connell co-operated cordially with the Quakers in their 
efforts for the amelioration of the condition of the slaves 
in America, and the unhappy victims of British mis-rule in 
India. He was also opposed to the punishment of death, 
knowing, as he did, of so many cases in Ireland where it had 
heen unjustly inflicted. In 1838 he spoke at a meeting at 
the Town Hall in Birmingham, in celebration of negro 
emancipation. He was received with enthusiastic cheering 
by many of the leading men of the day, who were present. 
O'Connell was much associated, in the advancement of 
these objects, with the late Joseph Pease of Darlington, 
above referred to. His daughter, now the widow of Profes- 
sor Nichol, has kindly given the following recollections: — 

"In travelling from London that day (1st August 1838), my 
father and he had talked over the subject, and came to the conclu- 
sion that an energetic agitation must be set on foot ; and in a few 
months the British India Society was formed, meetings held in 



DAILY HABITS. 



various parts of the kingdom, and a journal devoted to the advocacy 
of its objects established. 

" He told me that for twenty-five years of his life he rose soon 
after four, lighted his own fire, and was always seated to business 
at five ; at half-past eight one of his little girls came by turns to 
announce breakfast — gave an hour to that. At half-past ten he set 
off to the courthouse — walked two miles there in twenty-five 
minutes — always reached the court five minutes before the judges 
arrived ; from eleven to half-past three was not a minute unoccupied ; 
at half-past three he returned, taking the office of the Catholic 
Association in his way. He always went in (the regular meetings 
were only once a week), read the letters, wrote a sentence or two in 
reply, out of which his secretary wrote a full letter. Returned home : 
dined at four ; with his family till half-past six ; then went to his 
study ; went to bed a quarter before ten, his head on his pillow 
always by ten." 

This was indeed O'Connell's day for many a year of 
his long and useful life. 3 When at home he always had 

3 Mrs Nichol has kept copies of a number of autographs which O'Con- 
nell wrote for her for the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar. Some of these are 
characteristic, and new at least to the present writer : — " D. O'Connell 
M.P. Principle — That conscience should be free, education free, the 
press free, the people free." — " Daniel O'Connell, M.P., the first emotions 
of whose heart beat for the legislative independence of Ireland." 

In Miss Mitford's Life, published by Bentley (1870), there is a letter 
from her to Miss Jephson, dated 30th August 1834, in which she. says : 
— " Did I tell you that J had an autograph of 0' ConnelTs — most charac- 
teristic ? Here it is : — 

' Still shalt thou be my waking theme, 

Thy glories still my midnight dream ; 

And every thought and wish of mine, 

Unconquered Erin ! shall be thine. 

'Daniel O'Connell. 
1 August 4, 1834.' 

" I was afraid that it was a regular circular autograph, but I heard of 



m 






mass said by his own chaplain before breakfast ; and when 
in London or Dublin, he rarely omitted hearing mass at the 
nearest church. 

In March 1844, a meeting was held in St Mary's Hall, 
Coventry, at which the Mayor presided. The object was to 
consider the grievances of Ireland, and O'Counell was the 
principal speaker. The quaint old town was crowded to 
excess, and hundreds of persons, who were unable to obtain 
admittance to the hall, were fain to content themselves with 
a distant view of O'Connell as he proceeded to the rail- 
way station, en route for London. While in London he 
was received into the Order of St Joseph and Mary, with 
considerable ceremony, and in the presence of a great 
number of people. The Illustrated London News, then 
recently established, gave not only a good sketch of the 
ceremony, but also a spirited drawing, and the card of the 
brotherhood or guild. 

We shall conclude this chapter with the letters which 
O'Connell wrote to the Archbishop of Tuam from November 



one different the other day, anil have found out that this was written foi 
me expressly, which rejoices me much. I have just been writing a ser- 
mon on Tolerance, the virtue most wanted in Ireland, on both sides, I 
think ; you and yours, and Daniel O'Connell himself, seeming to me the 
only tolerant persons of your country, Protestant or Catholic." 

Miss Mitford was mistaken about the autograph, for it was one which 
O'Connell «ave frequently. 

On the 8th April 1833, she wrote to Miss Jephson — " I shall entirely 
be a convert to your countryman. I am turned O'Connellite, partly from 
love of his speeches." 




1840 to July 1844, and with an important document, 
which has been entrusted to us for this work by Isaac 
Butt, Esq., Q.C. :— 

"Darrynane Abbey, Gtk November 1840. 

" My ever dear Lord, — I write merely to say, that if it strikes 
your Grace that I can do, or say, or write anything to forward your 
views respecting the approaching election for Mayo, you have only 
to intimate a wish, and it shall of course be to me as a command. Sir 
T. O'Malley has written to me, but I have replied in general terms, 
referring him to your decision. It is, to be sure, very unlikely that 
I could in any respect influence the Mayo election ; and I write to 
your Grace on the subject only because others foolishly think that I 
could be of use to them. But if there were any utility in me, it 
should all be most cheerfully and readily at your Grace's command. 

" I was glad to hear that O'Connor Blake is a candidate. It will 
delight me to hear that he has your countenance and support. I 
think it would be a happy device, but of that you must be a better 
judge than I can be. 

" I have the honour to be, with veneration and regard, of your 
Grace the most faithful affectionate servant, 

" Daniel O'Connell. 

" Most Eev. Dr MacHale." 






I 



" Darrtnane Abbey, 30 th November 1840. 
"My dear and ever-respected Lord, — I have felt great 
anxiety as to the mode in which I should comply with your Grace's 
command— for your request is justly a command — to address 
the men of Mayo. There are so many local interests, pre- 
judices, and passions to be consulted and avoided, so much 
irritation to be soothed, and so much dormant rancour to be 
allowed to remain in repose, that I have been exceedingly uneasy, 
lest, whilst I sought to do good, I might be doing nothing but 
mischief. There is that fellow Cavendish; treating him as he ought 





fa 




LETTERS TO DR MAC HALE. 



to be treated might perhaps provoke him to continue, or give him 
a plausible excuse for continuing, his canvass. 

" Under these circumstances, I have resolved to draw up an ad- 
dress in the form which appears to me, at this distance, suitable. I 
make two copies of it. The one I send to your Grace ; the other to 
Barrett of the Pilot. I am anxious that your Grace should alter and 
amend the address in any manner you think fit. I adopt before- 
hand all your alterations, and make them my own. Barrett will 
not print the copy I send him until- he hears from your Grace. You 
can send him a private letter telling him- what to do ; but until he 
gets that letter he will not print the address. If you alter it, send 
him a full copy of the altered address. This to prevent mistakes in 
the printing. If you wished for my presence in Mayo, I would go 
there at once ; or my son John would go agitating there, if you 
thought that advisable. In short, my dear Lord, command us all. 

" I leave this at the close of next week for Dublin. I will be 
there, please God, about the 16th of December. 

" I have the honour to be, my ever dear Lord, of your Grace the 
most faithful, affectionate, humble servant, 

" Daniel O'Conneix. 



' Most Kev. the Archbishop of Tuam." 



" Merrion Square, A tujust 1843. 
" My revered Lord, — I take it for granted — I hope not errone- 
ously — that your Grace has been communicated with from Loughrea 
• and Connemara. As to the former, they sent me Mr Tully, with 
whom I arranged for the Loughrea meeting on the 10th of Septem- 
ber; and I have just fixed the 17th for Connemara. John O'Niel 
of Bunowen Castle travels down with me to Connemara ; and I 
think it likely that we shall be invited to Ballynahinch Castle for 
Saturday ; at least I have reason to believe it from a letter I have 
received some time ago from Miss Martin ; and I write to your Grace 
chiefly to know whether you have any suggestion to give me upon 
these subjects. You are quite aware that any suggestion of yours 



?^»„!2" 



fm^f ! 



NOTE BY ISAAC BUTT. 



701 



is a command to me. I think I may venture to wish you joy of 
■what is called the Queen's speech. It has already made a most 
favourable sensation here, and is, I think, calculated to enliven the 
Repeal zeal all over Ireland. 

" I have the honour to be, with the most profound respect, of 
your Grace the most faithful, humble servant, 

- " Daniel O'Connell. 

" To his Grace. the Archbishop of Tuam." 



Note Contributed by Isaac Butt, Esq., Q.C. 

" A statement has been recently made, apparently on good authority, 
which appears to throw some light on the transactions of this period. 

" It is to the effect that immediately after the reversal by the House 
of Lords of the judgment against O'Connell, a meeting was held in 
London of the leaders of the Whig party, then in opposition, and that 
it was resolved at that meeting to propose to Mr O'Connell and the 
Irish nationalists an alliance on the basis of conceding to Ireland a Par- 
liament, administering Irish affairs, under a system of federal union 
with Great Britain. 

" A vague and undefined belief to this effect has generally prevailed 
in some political circles. It was noticed by Mr Butt in the introduction 
to the first edition of ' Irish Federalism,' published in the summer of 
1870. It was not, however, until the end of last year (1871) that the 
statement assumed a distinct and authentic form. Mr Cantwell, a 
Dublin solicitor of high eminence, who had been attorney for O'Connell 
at the trial in the Queen's Bench, and also in the writ of error in the 
House of Lords distinctly stated that he knew of the meetiug of the 
leaders of the Whig party, and of their resolution to offer a Federal 
Parliament to Mr O'Connell. The statement attracted a great deal of 
attention. It was made the subject of a resolution at a meeting of the 
Home Government Association, and was commented on very generally 
in the press. Not one of the survivors of the persons alleged to have 
joined in the resolution have denied the truth of the statement. Lord 
Russell has been silent on the subject, although his attention was 
pointedly called to it by Mr Cantwell, and he has since written public 
letters adopting the principle of Home Rule for Leland. Mr Cantwell 



states that his information was derived from a person who was a Cabinet 
Minister when the Whigs returned to power in 1846. 

" Efforts were made to sound the opinions of some of the leading 
nationalists in Dublin by a gentleman who soon after filled the office of 
Attorney-General. Mr Cantwell does not consider himself at liberty to 
disclose the name of his informant. But to many persons it is no secret 
that the late Mr Hatchell was the person who endeavoured to obtain 
the opinions of many of the members of the Repeal Association. 

" Time will probably throw more light upon this transaction. At 
present it seems impossible to doubt that the Whig leaders were in 1844 
ready to form an alliance with Mr O'Connell, as representing the Irish 
people, conceding a Federal Parliament as one of its terms. Whether 
any negotiations were opened with Mr O'Connell, or if so, how or in 
what manner they were met, no information yet before the public tells 
us." 







f N the 7th of October 1843, Dublin was 
stirred as it had seldom been stirred 
before. O'Connell had proclaimed a 
monster meeting, which was to be 
held at Clontarf on Sunday the 8th, 
and on the 7th a proclamation sud- 
denly appeared to forbid the meeting. It is not 
too much to say that O'Connell's consummate 
prudence and the power he held over the people 
saved Ireland from scenes of blood, and the 
English Government from obloquy. 

The meeting should have been forbidden 
sooner, or not forbidden at all. To forbid it 
at the very last moment was almost sufficient 



RUMOURS OF AN ISDICTMEXT. 



to provoke an insurrection, and undoubtedly Government 
was prepared for such an extremity, if it did not desire it, 
for guns were placed in readiness to mow down the people, 
if they had assembled in defiance of the order. O'Connell 
saved Ireland. Messengers were despatched on the fleetest 
horses with a counter-proclamation from him, which was 
likely to have far more weight than orders from any other 
source, desiring the people to remain at home. The Rev. 
W. Tyrell was up all night for the same purpose; he was 
subsequently prosecuted, but died of fever, brought on by 
exposure to cold in doing the work of peace. 

Dublin was rife with rumours. In a few days there was 
more than rumour : O'Connell was indicted. For the first- 
time in his life he manifested some signs of fear. He 
was an old man. Under ordinary circumstances, his life 
could not be much prolonged, and he had never spared 
himself. " I scarcely think they will attempt a prosecu- 
tion for high treason," he said, "though, indeed, there is 
hardly anything too desperate for them to attempt. If they 
do, I shall make my confession and prepare for death." * 






4 " On the 11th of October the intention of the Government to prose- 
cute certain of the Repeal leaders for sedition was confidently rumoured. 
I was on that day chairman of tile Repeal Association. After the meet- 
ng I asked O'Connell how a conviction would probably operate upon 
the cause? 

" ' What," said I, ' will the Repealers do if you should be imprisoned, 
and communication with their guide cut off? How shall we act if the 
flock be scattered by striking the shepherd i ' 



i 



He thought constantly of the future, and said one day 
to his son Jolm, his ever-faithful companion, friend, child, 
and counsellor all in one, " I do not think two years' im- 
prisonment would kill me; I should continually keep 
walking about, and take a bath every day." It was 
evident that he dreaded it. 

At half-past nine o'clock on the morning of Saturday, 
the 14th of October 1843, Mr Kemmis, the crown-solicitor, 
waited on O'Connell and presented him with a paper, in- 
forming him that Government had instituted proceedings 
against him and his son, John O'Connell, for " conspiracy 
and other misdemeanours." After all, the serious charge 
anticipated was not preferred. Steele was in the house, 
and walked up and down the room, asking what he had done 
that he should not be included in the indictment. He had 
not long to wait for the gratification of his wish. 

At three o'clock, O'Connell and his son went to Judge 



" ' Oh, that cannot be,' he replied, ' till after the trial ; and in the 
meantime we will make arrangements to provide the best way we can to 
meet such a contingency. As for the tyranny itself, why, it 's only to 
endure it ! It cannot in its own nature last very long.' 

" Of the Repeal rent contributed that day, £80 were handed in under 
the denomination of ' Proclamation Money,' to indicate defiance of the 
Viceroy and the prosecution. 

" On the following day, the 12th of October, a report was spread that 
the Government would prosecute upon a charge of high treason. 
O'Connell's spirits, which had previously been excellent, seemed sud- 
denly and greatly depressed by this information." — Personal Recollec- 
tions, vol. ii. p. 181. 



708 



INDICTMENT OF HIS COMPATRIOTS. 



Burton's house, in Stephen's Green, to perfect his hail. 
Immediately after, he issued a short, emphatic address 
" To the people of Ireland" in which he implored them 
"to observe the strictest and most perfect tranquillity ;" 
and added, " Be not tempted by anybody to break the 
peace, to violate the law, or to be guilty of any outrage 
or disturbance." In the end he promised them repeal aud 
triumph. 

But Steele was not disappointed. He also was summoned 
and held to bail. For speeches at Mnllaghmast, O'Con- 
nell, Dr Gray, Mr Ray, and John Steele were charged. 
For speeches at dinner, there were O'Connell, Dr Gray, 
Steele, John O'Connell, Bay, and Barrett. For beiDg 
members of the Repeal Association, there were O'Connell, 
Rev. Mr Tyrell, P.P., Rev. J. Tierney, P.P., Barrett, 
Ray, John O'Connell, Gray, Steele, and Gavan Duffy. 
Saunders' newspaper for the day announced that rumour 
said Dr MacHale, the Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Higgins, 
Bishop of Ardagh, and Lord Ffrench, were to be indicted 
also. The principal information was given by Mr Hughes, 
a shorthand writer, who had been sent by Government to 
attend the Mullaghmast meeting. Portions of O'Connell's 
speeches there were set forth in the indictment, and there 
was a charge of " physical force " — the employment of 
O'Connell's " police," and the temperance bands forming 
the ground for this. Dr Gray was charged with holding 
the Repeal Arbitration Court at Black-rock. Mr Duffy was 




charged with publishing seditious articles in the Nation, 
which he had established. 6 

O'Connell was not without consolation and condolence. 
Joseph Sturge, the well-known Quaker, wrote to him 
from Birmingham, enclosing in his letter a resolution 
expressive of the indignation of a public assembly at the 
suppression of the Clontarf meeting. 8 

O'Connell went down to Darrynane for the rest of the 
winter, and enjoyed himself there as thoroughly as usual. 
In January, he returned to Dublin, not without a good- 
tempered growl at the Attorney-General for taking him 
away from his beagles and his hunting. The soft, mild, 
Kerry weather had even brought out the thrushes. 

The trials commenced on the 15th of January 1844. 
They were called the monster trials, partly because of the 
distinguished persons indicted, partly because of the size 
of the indictment, which was contained on six rolls of 
parchment, ninety-seven feet long. A special jury was 



* Nothing in the Nation, however, could have been stronger or more 
earnest than the following : — " We have denounced the poor-laws lustily, 
we have dwelt indignantly on their bad and brutal principles, their 
total inapplicability to miserable and far-spent Irish poverty, their 
stinging injustice, their wholesale social and political injury." — Leader 
in Illustrated London News, May 1844. 

6 The Quaker Sturge was not the only person who expressed approval 
of O'Connell at this period. After O'Connell was held to bail, he received 
a letter from Archdeacon Bathurst, son of the Bishop of Norwich, in 
which he said that he would join the Association if they would first attempt 
a federal union. If that failed, he would go in for Repeal. 



& 'V 

m 

V? 



WM 




710 



"RICHARD'S HIMSELF AGAIN!" 



empanelled, but there was not one single Catholic on 
the roll ; and, what was still worse, there was not a single 
liberal Protestant. 

As O'Connell proceeded up to Dublin, he was entertained 
at a banquet at Clonmel, by the Very Rev. Dr Burke. 
At Kilkenny he received an address from the Corporation. 
All kinds of rumours were flying in Dublin ; and, on the 
9th of January it was said the trial would be abandoned, 
though the summonses were served on witnesses the pre- 
vious day. Bets were made that no trial would be held 
that term. The excitement became greater every hour. 
An aggregate meeting was convened in the Music Hall, 
Dublin, on Saturday, at which 0"Connell attended, and 
appeared in good health and spirits. Sir John Power, Mr 
Wise, and Mr Thomas Esmonde were present. The hall was 
lit with gas, and about ten thousand people had assembled. 
The ground of meeting was the careful elimination of 
Catholics from the jury panel. Forde, a solicitor for the 
traversers, spoke at considerable length. Shiel spoke 
splendidly, and brought the house down in a roar of 
applause, while a boy cried out, " Richard 's himself again." 
O'Connell spoke, but he, alas ! was not himself. He hesi- 
tated for words ; his racy fun was gone, and he was either 
unable or unwilling to use strong language. 

On Monday, the 15th January, the trials commenced. 
O'Connell literally went iu state. Had he been the king 
of Ireland going to open Parliament, the procession could 






f^ 



I 



■ 



scarcely have been more impressive, or the ceremonial more 
imposing. He was King Dan, the king of the people's 
hearts, the uncrowned monarch of Ireland — of a people 
who never loved a man less because of his misfortunes — of 
a people notoriously devoted to a fallen cause. The Lord 
Mayor took O'Connell to the Court in his coach, followed 
by a procession of aldermen, all Repealers to the heart's 
core, and all attired in their official costume. 

The judges were Pennefather, Chief-Justice; Burton, 
Crampton, and Perrin. The two former were well known 
to have strong Tory proclivities. Judge Crampton was 
remarkable for his interest in the temperance movement, 
and Judge Perrin was a Whig. The Chief- Justice not 
only charged for the Crown, but against the traversers 
so markedly as to show his animus, had there been any 
doubt on the subject. The Attorney-General lunched with 
him every day during the trials. 7 No doubt the verdict 
would have been the same bad they been deadly foes. But 
it is well, above all in State trials, to preserve some ap- 
pearance of impartiality. For the Crown there were the 
Attorney-General, Smith, Warren, Brewster, Hartley, 
Freeman, Holmes, Butler, and Napier. For O'Connell, 
and the other eleven traversers, there was Shiel, Whiteside, 
M'Donnough, Moore, Fitzgibbon, Sir C. O'Loughlin, 



u 






7 The close intimacy between the Attorney-General and the Chief- 
Justice was noticed even in the English papers of the day, and this 
circumstance made a matter of comment. 



li 



O'Hagan, O'Hea, Clements, MacCarthy, Moriarty, Close, 
and Perrin. Their solicitors were Messrs Mahony, Cant- 
well, Gartland, and Forde. 

Chief-Justice Peunefather had risen to eminence by his 
own merit, and was a man of considerable talent. He was 
called to the bar in 179G, and was therefore contemporary 
with O'Connell. In addition to his Tory politics, he had 
evinced a strong preference for England and English society, 
and lived as much as he could out of Ireland. Judge Burton 
was an Englishman. He was at one time a Liberal, but in 
late years verged towards the Conservative party. Judge 
Crampton had been a Liberal, and a man of considerable 
literary ability, but no friend of O'Connell's. Before 
Father Matthew's advent he gave proof of his devotion to 
temperance, by ordering the contents of his wine-cellar to 
be emptied in a stream which flowed through his property 
at Bray, in the county of Wicklow. Judge Perrin was a 
steady friend to whatever would advance the social state of 
Ireland apart from politics. When in Parliament, he was 
noted for his assiduous attention to Irish affairs. Of the 
traversers a few words may be said. 

O'Connell looms up first in importance. His faithful son 
John was then a little past thirty, and lately married. Mr 
Ray had begun life in an humble way as a brewer's clerk, 
where his expert penmanship procured advancement for 
him into an attorney's office. He was unmatched as an 
accountant. Of Steele enough has been said elsewhere. 




Mr Barrett had been a brewer in early life, " but gave up 
the chemistry of malt and hops for political fermentation." 
He began life as a Conservative, and wrote on that side. 
Eventually he commenced the Pilot under O'Connell's 
auspices. He had already suffered imprisonment for pub- 
lishing one of O'Connell's speeches. His leaders were 
remarkable for vigorous denunciation and sharp sarcasm. 
In private life he was gentle and gentlemanly. Mr Duffy, 
who has so lately been the head of Government in Australia, 
was said by a wit of the day to have " pulled stroke-oar " in 
Mr Barrett's Pilot. He then set up the Belfast Vindicator, 
and suffered a crown prosecution. Mr O'Hagan, now 
Lord O'Hagan, the present Lord-Chancellor of Ireland, 
defended him with remarkable ability. He was convicted, 
nevertheless, but he escaped a sentence. He compensated 
himself by establishing the Nation, which had a weekly 
circulation at this period of from eight to ten thousand 
copies. This paper was the organ of the " Young Ireland " 
parly, which had been brought to light, if not to life, by 
the poet Thomas Davis, and by Gavan Duffy. Dr Gray, 
now Sir John Gray, was educated for the medical profession, 
but his talent for political writing, and his nationalitv 
which was none the less appreciated because he did not 
profess the national faith, led him to abandon the scalpel 
for the pen. At this period he was a man of slight figure 
and apparently delicate frame, yet he lives and works 
still ; possibly his ardent devotion to the temperance cause 



$ 



.-:» 



fi 



w 

m 
S 



714 



THE COUNSEL ON BOTH SIDES. 



has contributed to this result. He has never compromised 
an opinion, never altered his politics, he has never ceased 
to work for Ireland ; through all the changes, troubles, 
and fluctuation of thirty years, he remains at his post, the 
only one of these traversers who has not been taken from 
Ireland by death, or ceased to work for her. 

In the year 1841 he invested his capital in the Freeman 
Journal, then the daily organ of the Repeal party, and still, 
with equal ability and unchanging fidelity, the daily organ 
of the Liberal party in Ireland. 8 

The counsel on. both sides were distinguished men ; and, 
as far as intellect went, the forensic encounter was equal. 
The pleadings were opened by Mr Napier, and the iudict- 
'ment was supported by Smith, the Attorney-General. His 
speeches were frequently interrupted, and from the first 
it seemed as if there were a conspiracy to aggravate a 
temper which was said to be rather too capable of aggrava- 
tion. The principal witnesses were reporters and policemen. 
The reporters were brought up to prove the utterance of 
seditious speeches, but their evidence was not as satisfactory 
to the Crown as might have been expected. It came our, 
also, that one of these gentlemen had transgressed against 
the etiquette of his position, and acted as an informer. 

8 Dr Gray did a signal service during this very year, 1844, to the 
cause of religious liberty. A poor woman named Mary McKeon became 
a Catholic, and for doing this was dismissed from her situation by the 
Pour-Law Commissioners. Dr Gray took up her cause warmly, and 
succeeded in obtaining her restoration to her post. 



-. .:[ 



: -l 


















ADDRESS OF TUB CHIEF-JUSTICE. 



715 



It is to the credit of the " fourth estate " that his conduct 
was denounced indignantly by all the other reporters present. 
Shiel and Whiteside made speeches which would have 
made them famous if they had not already heen known to 
fame. O'Connell determined to be his own counsel, and 
did not speak until the twentieth day of the trial. His 
speech was one of great ability, but it was not one of his 
most successful efforts. Mr Fitzgibbon had attacked the 
Attorney-General very sharply in one of his speeches, 
and when the judges left the court for a few minutes, 
the irate Attorney-General flung a challenge across the 
court to Fitzgibbon. The bench was obliged to interfere 
to make up the quarrel. The judges, too, had a little 
fracas amongst themselves, Judge Crampton being guilty 
of gross discourtesy to Judge Perrin. When the latter 
was speaking he flung open his desk and made so much 
noise with parchments and books as to render the address 
almost inaudible. 

On the 7th of February, the twenty-third day of the 
trial, Chief-Justice Pennefather commenced his charge. 
He announced at the beginning that his brother judges 
agreed with him, and that his would be the only ad- 
dress to the jury. Men looked at each other in terrible 
anxiety, for so far there had been some doubt how the 
verdict would be given, some hope on the part of the 
thousands who waited for it so anxiously. The charge 
occupied two days, but the Chief-Justice had not spoken 



for hulf-an-hour when the traversers knew their fate was 
sealed. 9 

The verdict was Guilty, the Rev. Mr Tierney alone being 
excepted. It being Saturday, and past twelve at night, 
the jury were placed in custody until Monday morning. 
But, late as it was, there was a tremendous rush of re- 
porters to London. Some even had come from France and 
Germany. A Government steamer was waiting to take 
the news to England, and the Times of Monday (Feb- 
ruary 12) announced the fact almost at the same moment 
that the verdict was officially delivered in the Queen's 
Bench in Dublin. 

O'Connell went to London at once. When he entered 
the House of Commons, the Liberal party received him with 
a burst of applause, so that the gentleman who was speak- 
ing at the moment was obliged to pause. Such a reception 
would undoubtedly have been very gratifying to the 
Liberator, if he could only have believed it to be sincere. 

There were, undoubtedly, many men in the House who 
admired and supported O'Connell, and there were also 
some, like Lord John Russell, 1 who believed that he had 



8 Lord Xormanliv said in the House of Lords that when he got into 
the middle of it, and for a moment forgot the speaker, he thought lie 
was reading the Solicitor-General's speech for tin- Crown. During the 
charge, the Chief-Justice generally spoke of the traversers and their 
counsel as " the other side." 

1 Lord John Russell used these remarkable words when speaking of 
this trial in the House of Commons : — 



•- i 




Km 












m 



been unfairly tried by a deliberately packed jury. But 
there were also men, many men, whose sole reason for 
applauding O'Connell was to embarrass the Government. 

Public meetings were now held in different parts of 
England. At the Covent Garden meeting, O'Connell said 
himself that " the scene was never exceeded, and perhaps 
never equalled in any other country." At Birmingham, 
the English papers declared that his presence evoked 
" thunders of applause." 

On the 15th of April, judgment was to be pronounced, 
but it was deferred on account of a motion for a new trial, 



"Nominally, indeed, the two countries have the same laws. Trial by 
jury, for instance, exists in both countries ; but is it administered alike 
in both ?" 

He then proceeded to quote from a speech made by Brougham in 
1823, in which he said : — 

" In Ireland, however, the law held a directly opposite doctrine. 
The sect to which a man belonged, the cast of his religious opinions, the 
form in which he worshipped his Creator, were grounds on which the 
law separated him from his fellows, and bound him to the endurance of 
a system of the most cruel injustice." 

He then gave instances in which liberal Protestants, as well as Catho- 
lics, were excluded from juries, and he mentioned that this was the rule 
in Ireland. 

"This practice is so well known, and carried out so gen. rally, that 
men known to he Liberals, whether Catholics or Protestants, have 
ceased to attend assizes, that they might not be exposed to these public 
insults. Now, I would ask, are these proofs of e^ual laws, or laws 
equally administered ? Could the same, or similar cases, have happened 
in Yorkshire, or Sussex, or Kent ? Are these the fulfilment of the 
promise made and engagements entered into at the Union V 

Such was Lord John Russell's theory (when not in office). It is a 





THE SENTENCE. 



on the ground of misdirection on the part of the judge. 
No one doubted the " misdirection," it was openly con- 
demned by eminent lawyers in England, hut the rule was 
refused. 

The sentence was pronounced on the 30th of May, by 
Judge Burton, the duty falling to him as senior judge. 
The four judges were divided as to its severity. Penne- 
father and Crampton wished to give O'Connell two years' 
imprisonment, Judge Burton twelve months, and Judge 
Perrin six months. Judge Burton's award was at 
last taken. When pronouncing sentence Judge Burton 
was deeply affected, and actually proclaimed O'Cohnell's 

noticeable phenomenon of English political life that gentlemen out of 
office are always liberal to Ireland, and blame the injustice of the Govern- 
ment for the time being. 

Mr Macaulay expounded his theory. He said — 

" The affidavit which has been produced, and which has not been 
contradicted, states that twenty-seven Catholics were excluded from the 
jury list. I know that all the technicalities of the law were.on the side 
of the Crown, but my great charge against the Government is, that 
they have merely regarded this question in a technical point of view. 
We know what the principle of the law is, in cases where prejudice is 
likely to arise against an alien, and who is to be tried de medietate 
linguce. Is he to be tried by twelve Englishmen ? No ; our ancestors 
knew that that was not the way in which justice could be obtained, they 
knew that the only proper way was to have one-half of the jurymen of 
country in which the crime was committed, and the other half of the 
country to which the prisoner belonged. If any alien had been in the 
situation of Mr O'Connell, that law would have been observed. You 
are ready enough to call the Catholics of Ireland ' aliens ' when it suits 
your purpose, but the first privilege, the only advantage of alienage, you 
practically deny them." 



i 

vi 



THE CHARLIE OF JUDGE BURTON. 



innocence of the charge made against him, as it had 
never been proclaimed before. 

" He was perfectly convinced that the principal traverser did 
intend to carry his real object — the abolition of the Union — without 
the infraction of the public peace, without (if it were possible) the 
shedding of one drop of human blood ; he believed that he had that 
design rooted in his mind ; that he desired to act upon it ; and 
that it was by the great influence which he possessed as a leader, he 
had been able to keep and preserve the peace to the extent it had 
been kept and preserved. Let it never be forgotten, that a man 
who felt all those motives and desires as strongly as any human 
being could, who would not, on any account, commit an act of 
violence or bloodshed, and who possessed that unbounded authority 
and influence, made no use of it for the purpose of producing bad 
effects. If he did not misconceive several passa r es in the 
speeches of Mr O'Connell, they were used for the very purpose of 
keeping down violence." 

O'Connell's sentence was confinement for twelve calendar 
months, with securities to keep the peace for seven years 
himself in'£5000, and two securities of £2000 each. Con- 
sidering that no man had ever kept the peace in Ireland 
as he had done, the security demanded was unnecessary. 
John O'Connell, Dr Gray, Steele, Barrett, Duffy, and Ray 
were to be imprisoned for nine calendar months, to pay a 
fine of fifty pounds, and to be hailed to keep the peace also. 

The traversers, however, were allowed to choose their 
place of incarceration. O'Connell chose Richmond Bride- 
well. At four o'clock in the afternoon the traversers were 
escorted to prison by mounted police. They were followed 
by thousands in death-like silence; only, when they reached 










I 






' 



: fj 



720 



IN PRISON. 



the prison-gate, some long, loud, ringing cheers were given 
for the Liberator. He then addressed the people of Ireland 
in a short earnest letter, beseeching them, even adjuring 
them, by the holy name of God, to remain quiet. They 
obeyed him, but they did not forget him. The Repeal 
rent rose up to near £2000 a week. 

However O'Connell may have dreaded imprisonment in 
perspective, he bore up cheerfully under the actual inflic- 
tion. Yet there is no doubt that it injured his health 
Beriously. He was too old, too long accustomed to a free 
life, and to a peculiarly active life, to bear being cooped 
up all the bright summer months in one place. 

At that time the law with regard to political prisoners 
did not class them or treat them as felons. They suf- 
fered incarceration, nothing more. O'Connell's friends 
crowded to see him. Every clay hampers of provisions of 
all kinds were sent to him. The traversers had supplies 
for a siege. They held levees every hour, they had dinner 
parties almost every evening ; they had a fair space for exer- 
cise, but a jail is not home. " Three times round the jail 
garden is a mile," said O'Connell, " and I will walk it three 
times a day: " and so he did; but the jail garden wanted 
the invigorating breezes of his ocean-girt Darrynane. 



NARRATIVE BY SIR JOHN GRAY, M.P. 

" THE FIRST DAY OF THE IMPRISONMENT. 

"The 30th of May 1844 was a remarkable day in the life of 
O'Connell. On the morning of that day he and his co-traversers 




FIRST DAT OF THE IMPRISONMENT. 



appeared at the bar of the Queen's Bench by order of the Court. 
The solicitors engaged thought the order might be preparatory to 
their receiving judgment, and that it might be to fix a day for coining 
up to hear the judgment of the Court ; but fearing that it might be 
with the former object, they sent warning to each of the traversers 
to be in the Court at the hour named. The Court was not crowded, 
though a considerable number of leading men were present— for it 
was not generally known that the sentence was to be pronounced on 
that morning. A few there were who had positive information that 
it was probable that the Repeal traversers would leave the Court that 
morning for the prison, and they parted from the immediate members 
of their families with doubts as to when they would meet again, though 
with a faint hope that incarceration would not commence for about 
a week, the expectation being that that time would be given for 
making the requisite arrangements for a prolonged absence from 
family and home. The leave-taking on the morning of the 30th 
was often spoken of in prison, and made the topic of many a <*ood- 
humoured joke. The scenes were not lachrymose or heartrending, 
as the outer public might have expected, for each man of the party' 
the oldest as well as the youngest, felt proud of the distinction of 
being the companions of the Liberator in his imprisonment, as he 
was of being reckoned among his followers and co-liberators in the 
great work to which the great tribune had devoted his life. It is 
hardly necessary to add that arrangements were made to have the 
result of the meeting in Court communicated at once to the several 
families, and that duty being entrusted to Patrick Vincent Fitz- 
patrick, the ever-active agent of the O'Connell rent, was carried out 
with singular rapidity, and friendly care and consideration. At 
length the hour arrived, and the judge (Burton) proceeded to de- 
liver judgment. Burton was for many years the circuit-companion 
and personal friend of O'Connell. He was a man of high principle, 
genial and true as a friend, and a great admirer of O'Connell's for his 
forensic power and personal qualities. He commenced with much 
calmness, but evidently labouring under great emotion. As he pro- 
ceeded his aged face became suffused, his voice trembled, and, 
suddenly choking with emotion, his utterance failed, and, bursting 

2z 





into tears, he hid his face in his hands. Every person in Court was 

moved, save the traversers alone, who, fortified with the sense of the 
glory that awaited them ill being identified with their chief, wefeas 
impenetrable to sentiment as the nether millstone. In a few minutes 

the kind-hearted judge recovered his self-possession, and concluded 
the formal part of the judgment. The judgment over, the traversers 
now became prisoners, and in the formal custody of the sheriff they 
retired to one of the side rooms of the Court, not at the moment 
knowing to what prison they were to be assigned. The ever-vigi- 
lant and active Fitzpatrick now entered on another of his self- 
imposed tasks. He had, in preparation for all contingencies, taken 
advice as to the healthiness of the local prisons, and elected Rich- 
mond — as the Court privately intimated to the leading counsel that 
such election would be accorded to the Emancipator of the Catho- 
lics of the Empire. Then commenced the preparations for the 
removal of ' the State prisoners.' A carriage was procured for O'Con- 
nell, and covered vehicles for his fellow-prisoners. The cavalcade 
took a circuitous route to Richmond Bridewell, and so well had 
Mr Fitzpatrick performed his friendly office of advising the pri- 
soners' families of the result and destination, that the chief members 
had arrived at Richmond before the prisoners. Woman's fond and 
generous nature here displayed itself in all the beauty of loftiness 
and love. Tears and sobs were, however, soon converted into smiles, 
as, one by one, the prisoners met their friends with a joyous laugh 
of manly pride, and asked for congratulations at their being deemed 
worthy of the honours of that day. The Board of Superintendence 
was hastily summoned to give directions to the governor (Mr Purdon) 
as to locatii n and discipline of the prisoners. Fitzpatrick had a long 
interview with the Board in their official chamber. He had also dis- 
cussed matters with the governor and deputy-governor, which resulted 
in permission being given to the officials to hire their private resi- 
dences to the prisoners — the prisoners giving their word of honour 
that they would not violate the discipline to be settled for their guid- 
ance, or use the privilege awarded to them to etl'ect their escape. 
While these arrangements were being made, and the Board were en- 
gaged in fixing the rules and the leading details of the discipline appli- 



I 













cable to the special persons they had to deal with, the chief-warder 
was engaged in other and formal duties. O'Connell and his com- 
panions each entered the prison ' office,' which stands to the left 
of the entrance-hall, and the warder duly entered the age, height, 
colour of hair and eye, and the education of each of the prisoners, 
in the ordinary book and in the ordinary red-tape style, and regular 
in succession to the prisoners who had last previously entered 
within the prison walls." 2 

" The entries made, the prisoners still remained in the outer hall, as 
do all prisoners, till each is assigned his future 'quarters.' At length 
O'Connell was ushered into the presence of the Board of Superintend- 
ence. As he entered the room, the Chairman of the Hoard at once stood 
erect, a movement followed by every member present. The prisoner 
was respectfully saluted by a bow, which he graciously returned. 
He was then courteously informed that the Board were read)- to 
award him very large privileges if he would, on the part of himself 
and fellow-prisoners, give a pledge not to use the concessions to effect 
an escape from prison. With that gentlemanly regard which O'Connell 
ever showed for the feelings of the humblest of his followers in whom 
he confided, the old Irish gentleman said he would consult his friends 
and then swear for them. He came to the hall, repeated the words of 
the Board, and was met by ' Your promise, sir, should be law to us,' 
and immediately on his return the Board broke up ; passing through 
the hall, several of them addressed a few words of friendly condolence 
to him, and parted from their chieftain, now that they were outside 
their official chamber and off duty, with a cordial shake of hands. 

" The Board having departed, the governor communicated to 
the prisoners the arrangements made through the kind inter- 
vention of Fitzpatrick, and the generous action of the Board, 
especially the prison -governor, Joseph Boyce, who, though an 
earnest Conservative, displayed a high-minded, gentlemanly, and 



2 I am indebted to Sir John Gray for the narrative given above. It 
cannot fail to be of special interest, as being his own personal recollec- 
tions. The prisoners had given names to certain places in the garden. 
A small mound was called Tan, another place Mullaglmiast 



sympathising feeling towards the Liberator, which never ought to 
be forgotten to him or his, and who largely influenced his friends 
in the Board in framing the mild rule under which the prisoners 
lived in Richmond. As yet the arrangement was one by which the 
governor's and deputy-governor's house was placed at the disposal 
of the prisoners. O'Connell, of course, had the first selection of 
rooms, and he fixed on a second floor bedroom in the deputy-gover- 
nor's house, as being near the only room large enough for all the 
State prisoners to dine in together. John O'Connell naturally selected 
a room near his illustrious father. C. G. Duffy, lately Prime Mini- 
ster of Victoria, selected the dining-room and adjoining bed-room 
in the governor's house. Dr Gray, now Sir John Gray, M.P. for 
Kilkenny, selected the drawing-room and adjoining bed-room in the 
same department, and Steele and Bay made choice of rooms over 
those of Duffy and Gray, while Barrett selected rooms between the 
governor's and deputy-governor's chief apartments, but practically 
in the deputy-governor's, as he said 'to be near O'Connell.' Mrs 
John O'Connell, Mrs Gray, Mrs Duffy, Mrs Barrett, and Mrs Ray 
were installed as rulers in the respective ' cells ' of their husbands, 
and great was the confusion of bandboxes and parcels, great and 
small, and trunks and bags, as they were tumbled into the hall of 
Richmond Bridewell on that day. Each was, however, soon restored 
to order under the gentle sway of the ladies, and as dinner hour 
approached and the bell rang, the prisoners, each with his wife or 
relative, might he seen assembling in the great dining-room in the 
deputy-governor's house, not in full dress, but in something nearly 
approaching to it. O'Connell on that day led 'Mrs John,' as he affec- 
tionately called her, to her heat, and the first dinner in Richmond was 
partaken of by as joyous a family party as ever assembled. Seated 
at a round table, the property of the governor, now in the possession 
of Lady Gray, the prisoners were, on that occasion, in allusion to 
the great round table, called by the Liberator ' The Knights of the 
Round Table,' a title they bore during their stay at Richmond." 

The following is an exact copy of the prison record, above re- 
ferred to, which has not been previously published: — 




D. O'Counell, 
J. OConnell, 
J. Gray, 
T. Steele, . . 
R. Barrett, . 
Ch.is. G. Duffy, 
Thos. M. Ray, 


1 


£ 8 S £ S g 3 


s 


3 3 3 3 S 5' ^ 


a 


Dark. 
Fair. 
Fair. 
Grey. 
Grey. 
Brown 
Grey. 


g 

If 


Good. 

Fair. 

Fair. 
Fresh. 
Fresh. 
Pale. 
Dark. 


1? 


Cahirciveen. 

Dublin 
Claremorris. 

Ennis. 

Cork. 

Monaghan. 

Dublin. 


p 


Barrister. 

do. 
M. Doctor. 
Gentleman. 

Do. 

Do. 

Do. 


S 


fcf o a a a a s 


PI 


o o b a b b 1" £ 


B 
If 


f » » y » »« 
3 3 3 3 5 3 §§ 

p p <J> p p ^ ■ 


a 
| 


b o o o a o w 


El 
P 


S 3 3 3 3 3 3 


1 


bBObbb'SS Wlchnrited 

p o o o o o 7**.! by order of 

a," Government 


© o o © © £ ?fo Fines. 


1 1 1 I l-I^I l 

HH 1 





72C "THE RISING OF THE NATION AT LAST." 



While O'Conuell was in prison the Catholic hierarchy 
throughout Ireland vied with oue another who should have 
the honour of celehrating mass for him each day ; so numer- 
ous aud pressing w r ere the requests of those who wished to 
pay him this mark of respect, that it was actually necessary 
to secure a day some time before. The following letter will 
show that the great Archbishop of the west was as desir- 
ous of paying this mark of respect to O'Conuell as the 
humblest curate : — 

" Richmond Prison, 2d July 1844. 

" My Lord, — I have the honour to announce to your Grace that 
my father will feel deeply indebted by the kind fulfilment of your 
offer, to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass here at eight o'clock 
to-morrow morning. 

" I am, with most profound respect and veneration, of your Grace 
the most obedient humble servant, 

" John O'Connell. 

" The Archbishop of Tuani." 

The prisoners gave dinner-parties several times in each 
week, and it was on one of these occasions that O'Connell 
uttered a bon mot which is illustrated in the present 
work. Many of the staff of the Nation were present ; and 
as lie rose from the table, he turned to Mr Denis Florence 
MacCarthy, and said, with a look of humour which he alone 
could give, " See, MacCarthy, there 's ' the rising of the 
nation ' at last." 

Mr MacCarthy's poem on O'Connell's incarceration is 
inserted here, not only for its own merit, but because 
O'Connell himself thought highly of it. 



i«: 









MACCARTHY'S POEM. 



" CEASE TO DO EVIL— LEAKN TO DO WELL.' 

" thou, whom sacred duty hither calls, 

Some glorious hours in freedom's cause to dwell, 
Read the mute lesson on the prison walls — ■ 
' Cease to do evil — learn to do well 1 ' 

" If haply thou art one of genius vast, 

Of generous heart, of mind sublime and grand, 
Who all the spring-time of thy life hast passed, 

Battling with tyrants for thy native land ; 
If thou hast spent thy summer as thy prime, 

The serpent brood of bigotry to quell, — 
Repent, repent thee of thy hideous crime, 

' Cease to do evil — learn to do well.' 

" If thy great heart beat warmly in the cause 

Of outraged man, whate'er his race might be : 
If thou hast preached the Christian's equal laws, 

And stayed the lash beyond the Indian sea j 
If at thy call a nation rose sublime, 

If at thy will seven million fetters fell, — 
Repent, repent thee of thy hideous crime, 

' Cease to do evil — learn to do well ! ' 

"If thou hast seen thy country's quick decay, 
And, like a prophet, raised thy saving hand, 
And pointed out the only certain way 

To stop the plague that ravaged o'er the land ; 



3 The admonition, " Cease to do evil — learn to do well" is cut in deep 
letters on the front of the Richmond Penitentiary, South Circular Road, 
Dublin, the prison in which O'ConneR and the other political prisoners 
were confined in the year 1844 



If thou hast summoned from an alien clime 

Her banished senate, here at home to dwell,— 

Repent, repent thee of thy hideous crime, 
' Cease to do evil — learn to do well ! ' 

" Or if, perchance, a younger man thou art, 

Whose ardent soul in throbbings doth aspire, 
Come weal, come woe, to play the patriot's part, 

In the bright footsteps of thy glorious sire ; 
If all the pleasures of life's youthful time 

Thou hast abandoned for the martyr's cell, — 
Do thou repent thee of thy hideous crime, 

' Cease to do evil — learn to do well ! ' 

" Or art thou one whom early science led 

To walk with Newton through the immense of heaven ? 
Who soared with Milton, and with Mina bled, 

And all thou hadst in freedom's cause hast given 1 
Oh ! fond enthusiast, in the aftertime 

Our children's children of thy worth shall tell, 
England proclaims thy honesty a crime, — 

' Cease to do evil — learn to do well ! ' 

" Or art thou one whose strong and fearless pen 

Roused the Young Isle, and bade it dry its tears, 
And gathered round thee ardent, gifted men, 

The hope of Ireland in the coming years? 
W T ho dares in prose and heart-awakening rhyme, 

Bright hopes to breathe and bitter truths to tell? — 
Oh ! dangerous criminal, repent thy crime, 

' Cease to do evil — learn to do well ! ' 

" 'Cease to do evil ' — ay ! ye madmen cease ! 

Cease to love Ireland — cease to serve her well; 
Make with her foes a foul and fatal peace, 

And quick will ope your darkest, dreariest celL 




' Learn to do well ' — ay ! learn to betray — 

Learn to revile the land in which you dwell ; 
England will bless you on your altered way — 
' Cease to do evil — learn to do well ! ' " 

(It is scarcely necessary to say that the first three stanzas refer 
to O'Connell ; the fourth to his son, Mr John O'Connell ; the fifth 
to Thomas Steele, a graduate of Cambridge, and a man of great 
scientific and literary acquirements ; and the sixth to Charles Gavan 
Duffy, lately Prime Minister in Australia.") 

The traversers also amused tliemf-elves by, issuing a 
paper every week, which they called the Prison Gazette, in 
which they quizzed each other unmercifully. Gavan Duffy 
Dr Gray, and Barrett had, however, ample occupation in 
writing for their own papers. 

" During his imprisonment," observes Sir John Gray, in a private 
letter to the present writer, " O'Connell was as accessible to visi- 
tors, and as informal in his mode of ' giving audiences ' as the 
most junior of his companions. A ' friend of the cause,' from the 
most distant village in Ireland, whether lay or clerical, who desired 
to see ' the Liberator,' was at once presented by one of his fellow- 
prisoners, some member of the family of a ' fellow captive,' or 
some one of the faithful body-guard which was always in attend- 
ance on ' the Liberator ' as he took his walk in the prison-garden 
or sat in 'Tara' or ' Mullaghniast.' By a sort of instinct of what* 
was universally felt to be due as a matter of respect to the ' un- 
crowned monarch ' of the Irish heart, no stranger was permitted to 
approach his person unless presented by some friend; but there was 
no rule, no form, no specified observance, no ' hedging round ' of 
the person ; yet, without any prescribed etiquette, ' Steele, or Duffy, 
or Dr Gray, or Barrett, or John O'Connell, or my dear Kay,' was 
always at hand, and the humblest friend, though personally un- 
known, was certain of a 'presentation' and a cordial greeting. Not 



so with those who came from motives of prying curiosity or in 
a worse spirit, to see how the great Irishman looked in prison, — 
how he bore himself — how he felt — whether buoyant or cast 
down. Such men usually met with a rebuff which made them feel 
that O'Connell in prison was still Ireland's Liberator, and that, 
while the humblest visitor, who knew what was due to true great- 
ness, was welcome, whatever his politics or creed, the insolent scoffer 
at the cause symbolised by O'Connell was sure to return discom- 
fited and abashed. On one occasion, a noble lord from a midland 
county knocked at Richmond gate, sent his card by a turnkey to 
'the governor' of the prison with his compliments 'that he wanted 

to see Mr O'Connell.' Lord marched into the oblong space 

between the prison and the outer wall on which was placed the 
massive gate which led to the interior. The governor read the 
card in due course, but being at the time engaged officially, Lord 

was left for some time alone. In about ten minutes ' the 

governor,' who did not know the person of the ' Lord,' approached 
with the turnkey and bowed. The Lord addressed him, ' Ah ! Mr 
Governor, I presume ; I am very anxious to see Mr O'Connell.' 
'You know him, I presume?' was the reply of the governor, who 
was a thorough Irish gentleman of the old Conservative school. 
' Why, I do not know him, but I should like to see him, if you will 
arrange it for me.' ' My Lord, I will take your card to the 
Liberator, who is in the garden.' ' I will go in with you,' said the 
curious Lord. ' Yes, my Lord, if the Liberator directs you to be 
admitted when he sees your card. I will take it to him.' I was 
present when the above conversation was reported to O'Connell 
by the fine old gentleman who then held the office, one of the 
Purdons of Meath. O'Connell heard the details in silence ; he 
looked at the card ; a curl of scorn played upon his upper lip for a 
second; the card fell to the ground, rather it was thrown there, 
and, rising from his seat, O'Connell said, ' I '11 not see him. Mr 
Purdon,' turning, at the same time, towards the garden gate. ' But, 
air,' said Purdon, ' he is at the garden gate.' ' Then,' replied 






"■/ 




O'Connell, ' I will walk past the fellow to my room, and let him see 
that I will not see him.' O'Connell walked towards the garden 
gate, but whether the words of the Liberator were repeated by the 
turnkey, who stood midway between the principal parties and could 
have heard them, or the peculiar gait of the governor told what 
passed, the noble Lord sneaked off by the outer gate, and had got 
on the public road before O'Connell reached the iron gate that led 
to Mullaghmast." 

Addresses were sent to O'Connell from all parts of the 
world, even from the Catholic clergy of Wurtemburg, who 
spoke tonchingly of the benefits which the Irish mission- 
aries of the seventh century had conferred on their nation. 

The following- address from English Catholics must have 
been specially gratifying to O'Connell. It is signed by 
some of the best as well as the noblest of the Catholics of 
that country. It concluded thus : — 

" Your whole life, sir, has been spent in the cause of your country, 
and the advancement of civil and religious liberty ; and we, who have 
benefited by the exertions of that life, now conclude our address 
in terms of gratitude for the past, and of hope for the future — of 
hope that the day of your renewed exertion in the cause of your 
unfortunate country is destined again to arrive, and though now 
removed from the presence of your countrymen, that you may have 
the uninterrupted consolation of knowing that your precepts of 
order and peace are scrupulously attended to. 
(Signed) 
Shrewsbury, Kobert Berkeley, jun., 

Camoys, of Spetchley Park, 

Stourton, Worcester, 

Dormer, Edward Clavering, 

Stafford, Joseph Weld, Lulworth 

Newbuhgh, Castle, 




Charles Stocrton, Joseph T. Tempest, 

Charli s T. Clifford, Richard Hdddlestone, 

Edward M. Vavasour, of Edward Huddlestone, 

Hazelwood, Joseph Wood, 

William Warring, S. T. Scroope, 

Thomas Browne, Bishop R. Baillie, of Tad- 

of Appollonia, V.A., caster, 

Wales, J. Coltanach, LL.D., 

William Ridell, J. Drysdale, York, 

Pyers Mostyn, Richard Boyle, 

Charles R. Tempest, J. Bird, 

Mar. C. Maxwell, F. Jarrett, 

John F. Vaughan, G. Speakman, 

P. Constable Maxwell, Thomas Ord, 

Mayor of Richmond, James Smith." 

The Mayors of Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Kilkenny, 
and Clonmel, attended by numbers of the aldermen and 
town-councillors of each place, waited on O'Connell to 
present him addresses at the prison, but they were refused 
admittance. In the meantime the Liberator's friends were 
not idle. An appeal for reverse of judgment had been 
made to the House of Lords. The Lords required the opinion 
of the twelve judges. The twelve judges said, in point 
of fact, that the indictment was illegal, but the finding was 
right. The whole affair was a curious evidence of how 
prejudice warps judgment. The matter .was eventually 
decided by the five law lords. Lyiulhurst was a personal 
enemy of O'Connell's. Brougham always followed Lynd- 
hurst ; it was said, indeed, that if Lyndhurst had turned 
a somersault upon the woolsack, Brougham would have 




flung his heels in the air incontinently. Three of the five 
lords were for reversal of the judgment, and so it was 
reversed. Lord Denman when giving judgment said, 
" That if such practices, as had taken place in the present 
instance in Ireland, should continue, the trial by jury would 
become a mockery, a delusion, and a snare." 

O'Connell and his friends were at last free. On the even- 
ing of Thursday the 5th of September 1.S44, thousands were 
assembled on and about the pier at Kingstown, watching 
anxiously for the arrival of the Medusa, which was expected 
to bear the news either of release or prolonged incarcera- 
tion. The solicitors of the traversers, Messrs Mallony, 
Forde, and Cantwell, were on board. They had prepared 
flags, with the words, " Triumph of law and justice— the 
judgment reversed— O'Connell is free." They were 
accompanied by Mr O'Hagan, the present Lord Chan- 
cellor of Ireland, who had been one of the counsel for the 
traversers. A scene of tumultuous joy followed. There were 
cheers and shouts of " Free," " Free." Even the engine- 
driver of the train which brought the party to Dublin 
requested the flag to ornament his engine, and to render it 
a means of conveying the intelligence to the picturesque 
villages which lie along the sea-girt road. The newf 
was received at the prison with feelings which will not 
bear description. When order was restored the party 
sat down to dinner; but they were scarcely seated, when 
the governor of the prison, Mr Purdon, hurried into the 




room, exclaiming, " Good God ! can it be true ? " — his 
emotion almost depriving him of the power (if congratulat- 
ing O'Connell, as he intended. 

The gentlemen returned to their homes that evening, 
but before they left the prison they were obliged to write 
thousands of autographs for their friends. It was, how- 
ever, determined that a triumphal procession should be 
made from Richmond prison to O'Connell's house, for the 
double purpose of testifying the national joy at his re- 
lease, and the national indignation at his incarceration. 
The following day. Saturday the 7th of September, was 
selected for this purpose. At an early hour in the morn- 
ing, when thousands were looking for O'Connell in order 
to escort him to the prison, preparatory to his triumphal 
procession from it, he was found to have gone to Rich- 
mqnd at a very early hour for the purpose of hearing mass 
there, and concluding a Novena in which all the Catholic 
prisoners had joined. The eighth of September being the 
Feast of the Nativity of our Lady, the nine previous days 
were devoted to special exereUes of prayer, and other re- 
ligious duties, to obtain, through her intercession with 
the King of kings, the favour of a release from in- 
carceration. 

O'Connell did not forget others in his own joy, for he 
paid their fines for all the prisoners who had been pre- 
viously of good character, so that they might be released 
with him. The morning had been extremely wet, but 



n 




K 
V 



% 



about eleven o'clock the sun shone forth. All through the 
long route from O'Connell's house in Meriion Square to 
the prison, thousands had assembled and kept perfect 
order. At twelve, the first part of the procession reached 
the penitentiary, but it was two o'clock before the triumphal 
car reached the prison. Such a scene was never witnessed 
in Dublin. It is true, indeed, that George IV. went 
through the same parts of the city, surrounded by thousands 
who still had faith in English promises, but his procession, 
grand and attractive as it was, fades into comparative ob- 
scurity when compared with that of the uncrowned 
monarch of Ireland. The trades were there with their 
bands and banners. The Temperance Society was there, 
headed by that great and good man the Very Rev. D. 
Sprat t, whose memory is held in eternal benediction. So 
many equipages were required that some had been procured 
from distant parts of the country. The Lord Mayor and 
others were there in their robes, with many distinguished 
men, friends and admirers of O'Connell. The city 
marshal, Tom Reynolds, kept order, or to speak more cor- 
rectly, directed the procession, for the people kept order 
themselves. There was not a single policeman seen or 
needed in all that vast multitude. 

O'Connell was conducted from the jail by Mr Smith 
O'Brien, and was received with a roar of welcome which 
lasted several minutes. He ascended the ear, an imposing 
structure magnificently decorated. His son John followed 




"THE SHADOW FEARED OF MAX." 



him, and then his chaplain the Bev. Dr Miley. Dr Gray 
and his wife occupied the next carriage ; Barrett, Gavan 
Duffy, and Bay followed, and then honest Tom Steele ; the 
attorneys had the next carriage, and bore the monster in- 
dictment. As O'Connell passed the old Parliament House 
in College Square, his car was stopped. He rose up and 
pointed significantly to the building again and again. He 
had been put in jail for demanding, a parliament for 
Ireland ; he showed by his action that he intended to 
continue committing the offence for which he had so re- 
cently suffered ; and, to-day, an old English statesman, 
who has never been accused of any partiality to Ireland, 
suggests that same thing in a modified form. 

When O'Connell reached his house in Merrion Square, 
he addressed the people. He vindicated himself from hav- 
ing made any legal error, as the reversal of the judgment 
proved that he had not transgressed the law; and he told 
the people that " he was still strong enough in law and in 
fact" for his work. The rejoicings throughout the country 
were on a gigantic scale, and in two days after his release, 
an immense meeting was held in Conciliation Hall. 

But the dark shadow of the angel of death was even 
then looming dimly, but none the less really, over Ireland 
and O'Connell. The first troubles of his old age arose 
from the impetuous ardour of the men who came to be 
known later as the "Young Irelanders." John Mitchel, 
a man whose political honesty has never been questioned 




JOHN MITCHEL ON 0' CON NELL. 737 




for one second, even amidst all the turbulence of American 
politics, and whose personal integrity is best known to his 
private friends, writes thus grimly at the close of his own 
work on Irish history : — 

" The state trials were at an end ; and all the country, friends 
and enemies, Ireland and England, were now looking eagerly and 
earnestly for O'Connell's first movement, as an indication of his 
future course. Never at any moment in his life did he hold the 
people so wholly in his hand. During the imprisonment, both 
clergy and Kepeal wardens had laboured diligently in extending and 
confirming the organisation ; and the poor people proved their faith 
and trust by sending greater and greater contributions to the Repeal 
treasury. They kept the ' peace ' as their Liberator bade them ; and 
the land was never so free from crime— lest they should give strength 
to the enemy. 

" It is impossible to record, without profound admiration, the 
steady faith, patient zeal, self-denial, and disciplined enthusiasm, 
which the Irish people displayed for these two years. To many 
thousands of those peasants the struggle had been more severe than 
any war ; for they were expected to set at nought potent landlords, 
who had over them and their children power of life and death— 
with troops of insolent bailiffs, and ejecting attorneys, and the omni- 
present police ; and they did set them at nought. Every vote they 
give at an election might cost them house and home, land and life. 
They were naturally ardent, impulsive, and impatient; but their 
attitude was now calm and steadfast. They were an essentially 
mihtary people; but the great 'Liberator' told them that 'no 
political amelioration was worth one drop of human blood.' 

" They did not believe the formula, and in assenting to it often 
winked their eyes; yet steadily and trustfully this one good time, 
they sought to liberate their country peacefully, legally under the 
advice of counsel. They loyally obeyed that man, and would obey 
no other. And when he walked in triumph out of his prison, at 

3a 






one word from his mouth they would have marched upon Dublin 
from all the five ends of Ireland, and made short work with police 
and military barracks. 

" But O'Connell was now old, approaching seventy ; and the fatal 
disease of which he was then really dying, had eagerly begun to 
work upon his iron energies. After his release he did not propose 
to hold the Clontarf meeting, as many hoped. He said nothing 
more about the ' Council of Three Hundred,' which the extreme 
section of nationalists were very desirous to see carried into effect ; 
and the more desirous because it would be illegal, according to what 
passes for law in Ireland. Yet the Association all this time was 
becoming more powerful for good than ever. O'Brien had instituted 
a ' Parliamentary Committee,' and worked on it continually himself ; 
which, at all events, furnished the nation with careful and authentic 
memoirs on all Irish questions and interests, filled with accurate 
statistical details. Many Protestant gentlemen, also, of high rank 
joined the Association in 1844 and 1845— being evidently uncon- 
scious how certainly and speedily that body was going to destruc- 
tion. 

" In short, the history of Ireland must henceforth be sought for 
elsewhere than in the Repeal Association." 

Davis, who had set the Irish on fire hy his poetry; 
Mangan, who helped him ; other men, now settled down 
into sober citizens, and some of them in high places — Gavan 
Duffy, in the Nation, and John Mitchel, who never minced 
words — all these, and many more, were eager for something 
more than words. They knew nothing of the horrors of 
civil war or rebellion, successful or otherwise, except by 
tradition. The race of men were gone, or fast going, that 
suffered themselves, or rather had seen the death throes 
of others, as they expired in the horrible agonies of torture, 









or left their life-blood on green Erin's fields. These young 
men, brave, chivalrous, loving their country to a fault, 
because it is always a fault to plunge recklessly into war, 
were aweary of O'Connell's peaceful agitation, and would 
fight with his leave, if they could get it, if not, without. 
Some of these men did attempt to fight later on, and we all 
know how it ended. 

If O'Connell had been twenty years younger when he 
was released from Richmond Bridewell, he might have 
obtained Repeal by some ten years' continuous agitation ; 
as it was, he probably knew better than any man else that 
his days were numbered. His position was indeed a painful 
one ; he had no choice but to continue agitating to a certain 
degree, or to give up agitation altogether, and to retire 
from public life. 

A Mr Porter came forward now with a plan for raising 
a national militia; and then, when he did not meet with 
much attention, he went to Conciliation Hall, looked over 
the books, and tried to cast obloquy on O'Connell's 
management of pecuniarj- matters. O'Connell in vain im- 
plored "the charity of Irishmen," until he worked out his 
plan of federation. He said to Mr O'Neill Daunt one 
day, " I am .quite well, that is to say, I am as well as a 
man can be who is opposed by one-half his friends, and 
who is deserted by the other half." The English comic 
papers attacked him also at the same time ; and he was 
sorely tried by a brief which came from Rome, and 



[ah 



which, though it did not actually forhid the clergy to join 
in the Repeal agitation, at least obliged them to refrain, to 
a certain degree, from public expressions of opinion. 

The rescript was believed to have been procured by the 
English Government through an English Catholic. It 
was sorely felt throughout the length and breadth of Ire- 
land ; yet the Irish, like the Jesuits, have submitted, always 
most faithfully and scrupulously, to enactments which they 
believed to be procured by enemies of their own faith from 
the basest motives. The prudence and wisdom of the 
Holy See was pre-eminently shown in the moderate tone of 
the brief; but, while the people of Ireland believed that 
there had been English interference, they could not but 
feel it deeply. Their fidelity to the Holy See had never 
wavered; they had poured out their life's blood again and 
again for the true faith; they had supported and propa- 
gated their religion as no other people on earth have ever 
done, and they looked for sympathy rather than repression. 
They were jealous, and not for the first time, because it 
seemed to them that England was preferred, notwithstand- 
ing her apostasy, because she was prosperous and wealthy, 
that Ireland was slighted because she was poor and of no 
political esteem. Yet this most faithful people submitted, 
as they have ever done, to the chair of Peter. 

The truth was, that Sir Robert Peel was in mortal terror 
of ah Irish insurrection. He said so plainly. It was the 
same old story. It mattered little to him how the country 



' ( 

V) 



A CLOUD ON TEE WESTERN HORIZON. 741 





waa made to sailer in silence; if silence could be procured 
and compelled, that was enough. 

" There rises in the far western horizon a cloud [Oregon], small, 
indeed, but threatening future storms. It became my duty, on 
the part of the Government, on that day, in temperate but sienifi- 
cant language, to depart so far from the caution which is usually 
observed by a Minister, as to declare publicly, that, while we were 
most anxious for the amicable adjustment of the differences 
— while we would leave nothing undone to effect that amicable 
adjustment — yet, if our rights were invaded, we were prepared and 
determined to maintain them. I own to you, that when I was called 
upon to make that declaration, I did recollect with satisfaction and 
consolation, that the day before I had sent a message of peace to 
Ireland." — Speech in Parliament on the '2d April 1844. 

It was no doubt very satisfactory to Sir Robert Peel, but 
it would have been a good deal more satisfactory to the 
people of Ireland, if " messages of peace " were not always 
sent whenever England is apprehensive of war. 

The Landlord and Tenant Commission, better known as 
the Devon Commission, was set to work. It might have 
done some good, had it not been entirely managed by 
landlords ; the tenants, the principal parties concerned, 
were left out. 

The following letters conclude the series written to Dr 
MacHale :— 

(Strictly Confidential.) 

" Merrion Square, 19t*/t Feb. 1845. 
" My revered Lord, — I am exceedingly alarmed at the coming 
prospect. I am truly afraid that the Ministerial plans are about to 
throw more power into the hands of the supporters of the Bequests 




Bill. A fatal liberalism is but too prevalent, and these pseudo- 
liberals are exceedingly anxious to have an opportunity of assailing 
the party of the sincere and practical Catholics as being supporters 
of narrow and bigoted doctrines. I should not take the liberty of 
troubling your Grace with a letter, if I were not deeply alarmed 
lest the friends of truly Catholic education should be out-manceuvred 
by their enemies. What those enemies most desire is, that a prema- 
ture movement should be made on our part. They say — and I fear the 
public would, and perhaps ought to, go with them — that to attack 
Peel's plan before that plan was announced and developed, would be 
to show a disposition inimical to education, and a determination 
not to be satisfied with any concession. I do not wish to give our 
enemies any pretext for avoiding the real question that may, and 
perhaps mvst, arise by any by -battle as to the time of commencing 
our attack — that is to say, if we shall find it necessary to attack at 
all. I say this, because however strongly I believe that we shall 
have occasion to attack, yet that occasion cannot arise legitimately 
until the plan is known in all its .details. It is possible, though not 
very probable, that the appointment of professors to instruct the 
Catholic youth may be given to the Catholic prelates ; and in that 
case, though the principle of exclusive Catholic education may not 
apply, yet I should think there could be no objection to Protestants 
attending the classes, if all the professors were nominated by the 
canonical authorities of the Catholic Church. 

" Besides, by waiting until the plan is out, and known in its 
details, we shall have an opportunity of attacking its defects with- 
out leaving any room for a charge of hostility to education generally. 
I do, therefore, most respectfully and with perfect humility suggest 
to your Grace, whether it be not the wisest course not to make any 
attack upon academical institutions until we know what those in- 
stitutions are to be. I need not inform your Grace that my own 
opinion is decidedly favourable to the education of Catholics being 
exclusively committed to Catholic authority. 

" I hope and trust your Grace will have the goodness to excuse 
this intrusion upon you. What 1 am anxious about is to prevent 



m 



• ?~^> ...'27'Tv^ 



LETTERS TO DR MACHAL& 



our antagonists from having any advantage as to the period of the 
discussion, or to any collateral circumstance extrinsic of the real 
merits. 

" I have the honour to be, revered Lord, of your Grace the most 
faithful servant, Daniel O'Connell. 

" The Archbishop of Tuam." 



{Private.) 

" London, 21st June 1845. 
" My ever-revered Lord,— My heart is heaving and my fears 
are great, least seduction should accomplish what force and fraud 
have failed to achieve. But my confidence is unshaken in the wis- 
dom and virtue of our prelates. Why, then, do I write ? Because I 
wish to disburthen myself of two facts. The first, that Sir Francis 
Graham's amendments make the bill worse, simply by increasing and 
extending the power and dominion of the Government, or of per- 
sons appointed by and also removable at will by that Government, 
over a wider space, and over more important and more delicate 
matters, including perhaps all religious details. The second fact 
is, that if the prelates take and continue in a high, firm, and unani- 
mous tone, the Ministry will yield. . Believe me that they are ready 
to yield. You have everything in pour own power. By your, of 
course, I mean the prelates, or the majority of them. 

" You will have from the Ministry abundance of words, sweet 
words and solemn promises. If however, then, by just caution on 
the part of the prelates, they can dictate theih own terms, the 
danger is that the prelates, judging of others by themselves,\vill 
disbelieve in designed deceit, and so yield to empty promises, that 
which could ensure, if withheld for a while, substantial performance. 
" My object is that your Grace should know to a certainty that the 
game is in our hands if the prelates stand firm— as I most respectfully 
believe they will— to all the Church sanctions relative to Catholic 
education. 

41 1 mark this letter ' private,' merely because I do not wish to 



LETTERS TO BR MAC HALE. 



bave it appear in the newspapers. If the facts I mention are of 
use, yon can use them. 

" Pray pardon my intrusion. 

" I have the honour to be, with the most profound venera- 
tion, my revered Lord, of your Grace the most devoted humble 
servant, Daniel O'Connell. 

" The Most Rev. the Archbishop of Tuam." 

" Darry.nane Abbey, 12th August 1845. 

' My rkvered and loved Lokl>, — Many and many hearty thanks 
for your kind letter and the suggestions it contains. I am preparing 
my answer to the Most Rev. Dr Murray. It ought to be considerate 
and most courteous, without betraying any want of proper firmness. 
I do not know whether I shall succeed in writing such a letter, and 
I anxiously hope that, at all events, you will not be displeased with 
what I shall write. It would be to me a cruel punishment to merit 
your disapprobation. 

" I have the honour to be, with profound veneration and esteem, 
revered Lord, jour most respectful attached servant, 

" Daniel O'Connell. 

" Most Rev. the Archbishop of Tuam." 



"Killarney, 1th October 1S45. 

"My revered Lord, — I had the honour to receive an invitation 
from your Grace for Saturday, and have the greatest pleasure in 
accepting. I will, I trust, wait on your Grac3 by four in the after- 

1 of Saturday. It will, I know, be necessary to leave Tuam very 

early on Sunday. lean offer your Grace two seats in my carriage 
tn Castlebar. 

'•We have had a glorious meeting here. Meeting and banquet 
were gloriously and must usefully carried out. 

" I have the honour to be, with profound respect, of your Grace 
the most faithful, humble servant, DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

" The Archbishop of Tuam." 






" British Hotel, Jeemtn Street, London, 
Friday, 21th February 1846. 
" My revered Lord, — I have only time to acknowledge the 
receipt of your Grace's letter, and to enclose you a cheque for £250. 4 
Any one you give it to will get money for it at the Tuam Bank. 
Will you be so good as to answer this letter, acknowledging receipt 
■with its contents, without further specification. 

" I have the honour to be, with profound respect, of your Grace 
the most faithful servant, Daniel 0"Connell. 

" To His Grace the Archbishop of Tuam, Ireland." 



! 



" 30 Merrion Square, Dublin, 15(/j April 1846. 

"My ever-revered Lord, — Excuse me forgiving you the trouble 
of procuring the enclosed £50 to be distributed among the wretched 
tenants of Ballynglass. 

" I received the money in London in an anonymous letter, writ- 
ten to me to be applied to those evicted tenants — I mean the Bal- 
lynglass tenants, 207 in number ; a very small sum for each ; but 
my mission will be fulfilled when I procure the distribution. 

" I know not how to do so, unless your Grace assist me. It 
jjjjiW strikes me that your secretary can easily discover the parish priest, 

M* and procure him to take charge of the distribution. 

^ " In respect to the Mayo election, nothing can be more satisfac- 

tory than your Grace's letter; nothing but the strictest economy 
could keep down the expenses to the sum which your Grace men- 
tions. It was indeed a great triumph, at very little comparative 
cost. It was a bold undertaking, and would have been fatal if 
unsuccessful. Your Grace's energy, and all-commanding influence, 
aided by the patriotic clergy, have achieved the most valuable 
triumph for Ireland since the Clare election. 

" There will be some little delay in the payment of the balance ; 
but it will be as short as possible. 



" As your Grace is coming to town in a week, I will leave with 
my daughter, Mrs Ffrench, a cheque for your Grace for £128. It 
will be in a sealed letter, and if you will take the trouble of sending 
to P. V. Fitzpatrick to procure for you a letter left by me with 
Mrs Ffrench, be will take care to hand your Grace the letter; but, 
as it is no affair of his, he need not know anything more about it 
than merely getting the letter and handing it to your Lordship. 

" With respect to the balance, you may rely upon its being paid 
in three weeks. I hope the short delay will not prove inconvenient. 

" I have the honour to be, with profound respect, my revered Lord, 
of your Grace the most faithful servant, Daniel O'Connell. 

" The Most Rev. the Archbishop of Tuam " 

"Merrion Square, 2ith December 1846. 

" My ever-reverkd Lord, — I have not as yet had any reply 
from Mr Redington. I write, however, to say, that as far as my 
opinion goes, I should much approve of the idea your Grace has 
thrown out, of writing yourself to that gentleman. It would be 
the mode most likely to contribute to success. 

" I have the honour to be, with profound veneration, of your 
Grace the devoted servant, Daniel O'Connell. 

" The Lord Archbishop of Tuam." 



£S 



■V- 



" Merrion Square, Dublin, 26th December 1846. 

" My revered Lord, — I have this moment received the enclosed 
private note from the Lord- Lieutenant. I know that no secrecy is 
violated in allowing you to read it ; besides, I wish that you should 
have the satisfaction of knowing how promptly his Excellency has 
taken up your complaint. I have but one moment to write, and, 
therefore, only request of your Grace to return me the enclosed as 
soon as you have read it. 

" I have the honour to be, with profound respect, of your Grace 
the devoted servant, Daniel O'Connell. 







THE FAMINE OF 1845. 



747 



Davis died in 184o, and O'Connell mourned for him 
deeply, though they had heen so opposed. In writing- f 
this event, he seemed to anticipate his own speedy end, and 
even then, though he knew it not, the softening of the brain, 
of which he died, had already commenced. 6 

In September 1845, O'Connell visited Cashel, where he 
received an extraordinary ovation, at which it was estimated 
a hundred thousand persons assisted. Fifteen thousand 
men were mustered in one place alone, on horseback. 

The famine blight fell on Ireland at the close of this 
year. O'Connell at once saw what should be done, not, 
indeed, to avert the calamity, it could not be averted, but 
to meet it. At the very moment when the Irish were 
starving by thousands, Irish grain was being imported to 
England. Plans were made and unmade, suggestions were 
made and objected to. As O'Connell said, and said 
truly— 

" So we have got scientific men from England ! It appears that 
they would not answer unless they came from England !— just as if 
we had not men of science in abundance in Ireland, ay, of a higher 
order and more fitted for the duties than any Saxon they could send 
over. There must be something English mixed up hi the thine ; 
even in an inquiry, involving perhaps the life and death of millions, 
anti-national prejudices must be indulged in and the mixing-stick 
of English rule introduced. Well, they have given us two reports 
— these scientific men have ; and what is the value of them ? Of 



6 " I, of course," he wrote, " in the few years, if years they be, still 
left to me, cannot expect to look upon his like again, or to see the place 
he has left vacant adequately filled up." 



what practical use will they be to the people ? I read them over 
and over again in the hope of finding something suggestive of a 
remedy, and, so help me Heaven ! — I don't mean to swear — if I 
could find anything in the reports by these scientific men, unless that 
they knew not what to say ! They suggest a thing, and then show 
a difficulty ; again, a suggestion is made which comes invested with 
another difficulty ; and then they are ' your very humble servants ! ' 
Oh ! my Lord Mayor, one single peck of oats — one bushel of wheat 
— ay, one boiled potato — would be better than all their reports." 

Terrible and horrible as the details of that famine are, 
they would have been yet more terrible, yet more horrible, 
but for the generosity and the good common sense of some 
few private individuals, and, above all, of the members of 
the Society of Friends. While Government talked about 
plans, and sent out commissions, they acted ; and if they 
could not stay the famine plague, they alleviated it in some 
little measure. The Ti7nes' commissioner, overlooking the 
utter destitution of other parts of Ireland which ought to 
have been prospering, attacked O'Connell for not making 
his tenants prosperous. Hatred of O'Connell, and the 
utter incompetence of such individuals to understand the 
country, however much they may " interview " the people, 
proved the fertile source of misrepresentation. O'Connell 
had done much for his ancestral property ; to say that he 
might have done more, was to forget that his public occu- 
pations were such as had rarely falleu to the lot of any 
other man. Undoubtedly, no amount of public occupation 
is an excuse for the neglect of home duties, but it may be 
pleaded as an extenuating circumstance. 





Round Tower and Crypt in Glasnerin Cemetery, Erected to his Memory. 



SUGGESTION OF DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. 749 



An article was written in the Nation at the close of 18'45, 
which was also the cause of much pain to the aged Libe- 
rator. He was accused of being the author by those who 
were probably well aware that he had never written a line 
of it, or seen a line of it, until it was given to the public, 
for this article Gavan Duffy was tried and acquitted ; yet 
excited by the wicked and cruel suggestion of the Duke of 
Cambridge, O'Connell spoke boldly himself at the Repeal 
Association, in his last speech in Ireland. 

" ' Ireland,' said the Duke, ' is not in so bad a state as has been 
represented. . . . I understand,' continued his Highness, 'that rotten 
potatoes and sea-weed, or even grass, properly mixed, afford a very 
wholesome and nutritious food. We all know that Irishmen can 
live upon anything, and there is plenty of'grass in the fields even if 
the potato crop should fail ! '— ' There,' said O'Connell, ' is the son 
of a king !— the brother of a king ! -the uncle of a monarch !— there 
is his description of Ireland for you ! Oh, why does he think thus 
of the Irish people ? Perhaps he has been reading Spenser, who 
wrote at a time when Ireland was not put down by the strong arm 
of force or defeated in battle — because she never was defeated — but 
when the plan was laid down to starve the Irish nation. For three 
years every portion of the crop was trampled down by the hoofs of 
the horses of mounted soldiery; for three years the crops were de- 
stroyed, and human creatures were found lying behind ditches, with 
their mouths green by eating sorrel and the grass of the field 1 The 
Duke of Cambridge, I suppose, wishes that we should have such 
scenes again enacted in this country. And is it possible that in the 
presence of some of the most illustrious nobility of England, that 
royal personage should be found to utter horrors of this description? 
I will go over to England to see what they intend to do for the 
Irish — whether they are of opinion that the Irish are to feed on 



m 



m 




grass or eat mangel-wurzel. If that should be attempted — and may 
God avert the possibility of the occurrence — I do not hesitate to 
say it would be the duty of every man to die with arms in hia 
hands.' " 

As one man the vast assembly rose and cheered the 
suggestion to the echo. 

O'Counell looked his last look at the Irish shore on the 
26th of January 1846. By a most curious coincidence he 
-was accompanied by a parish priest and a Protestant clergy- 
man from the south of Ireland, who were going over to- 
gether to collect or rather to obtain food for their starving 
people. These two' devoted men worked together and lived 
together in London for some days, and by their united 
exertions obtained the despatch of several shiploads of food 
for their dying parishioners. The priest was a near rela- 
tive of the Liberator, but the circumstance of the sailing in 
the same ship was accidental. It was indeed a fitting 
conclusion to O'Connell's noble life, to his life spent in 
promoting peace, in trying to unite the Irish people, in 
trying to persuade them to hury their religious differences 
in oblivion. 

In all his sufferings O'Connell still worked for Ireland; 
but he was terribly distressed by the news which came from 
his unhappy country. Death and disease were doing their 
awful work, and mowing down thousands and thousands of 
the brave and true men, of the pure and good women, who 
had loved O'Connell as a hero, and honoured him as a 






/ ?'*\ 



I 



saint. The Young Ireland party had openly separated from 
O'Connell's followers. Mr John O'Connell made a fruit- 
less effort to reconcile these differences, nevertheless Smith 
O'Brien and his party marched out of Conciliation Hall, and 
left him weeping bitterly. 

The last blow which crushed O'Connell was the rejection 
of Lord George Bentinck'a bill to empower Government to 
lend sixteen millions to the Irish railway companies. This 
would at once have given employment to the starving 
people, and would have paved the way for the future de- 
velopment of the industrial resources of Ireland. Two 
days after the rejection of the bill, it was rumoured that 
O'Connell was dead. He was not dead, but he was seriously 
ill, and what was still more painful, he was terribly de- 
jected. Probably, the oppression on his brain, which had 
already commenced, added its share to the other causes 
which bowed down the giant intellect, and depressed the 
once vigorous and hopeful mind. 

It was proposed, at first, that O'Connell should return to 
Ireland, but a warmer climate was suggested by his phy- 
sicians, and he was himself most anxious to take a pilgrim- 
age to Rome, probably with the hope of ending his life in 
the sacred city. 



" His days," writes an intimate friend, " were evidently drawing 
to a close. His voice was broken, hollow, and occasionally quite in- 
audible; his person was debilitated; the vigour of his eloquence 
was gone, and his appearance was that of one who, destined soon to 






descend into the grave, makes the last feeble rally of his fainting 
powers in performance of a duty to his country. 

" His indisposition now daily increased. If his mind could have 
been soothed by the attentions of the great, he possessed that species 
of consolation ; nobles and ministers of State made daily inquiry at 
his hotel. Nay, even royalty once or twice paid him a similar com- 
pliment. 

" His physicians advised him to try a milder climate. 

" Prior to quitting England for the Continent, he sojourned for 
several days at Hastings. While he stayed there he was visited by 
three of the most distinguished of the Oxford converts. Those 
gentlemen stated ' that their visit was not made for the mere pur- 
pose of compliment or condolence ; but, in order that they might 
have the pleasure of personally assuring him that the religious 
chance which they, and numerous others, had made, was ascribable, 
under God, to his political labours, which had in the first instance 
attracted their attention to the momentous questions at issue be- 
tween Protestants and Catholics. The inquiry that originated thus, 
ended in a conviction of the truth of Catholicity.' He was pleased 
at this intelligence ; his spirits rallied, and he conversed with his 
new friends for nearly an hour with the point and vivacity that had 
characterised him in the days of his vigour." 



On Monday, the 21st of March 1847, O'Connell took a 
final farewell of his old and tried friends ; and embarked 
for Boulogne, escorted to the pier by gazing crowds, whose 
countenances were expressive of a mixture of curiosity and 
sympathy. The passage to Boulogne was short, and the 
distinguished invalid on his arrival was greeted with marks 
of public courtesy similar to those which had attended his 
departure from England. When he arrived at the Hotel 
de Bains, many persons left their cards ; and a polite in- 




vitation to an entertainment, which was given on that 
evening by the British residents in Boulogne, was for- 
warded to Mr O'Connell and his friends, but the state of 
the Liberator's health rendered his acceptance of the com- 
pliment impossible. On taking his departure the follow- 
ing morning, the court-yard of the hotel contained many 
spectators, both French and English, who all uncovered 
their heads as he passed to the carriage. There was some- 
thing very touching in this mute homage. 

At Paris he consulted Professor Chomel and Dr Oliffe, 
who considered that his weakness arose from slow con- 
gestion of the brain. From Paris to Lyons, the journey 
occupied twelve days, as the invalid was obliged to stop 
at Nevers, Moulines, and LapaJisse. When at Lyons, he 
called in Professor Bonnet, who also expressed his opinion 
that congestion of the brain had set in. Nevertheless, the 
professor pronounced " that his patient's understanding was 
perfectly clear;" it was, however, "little active, and the 
mind was a continual prey to sad reflections." M. Bon- 
net's description of O'Connell's appearance and condition 
at this period, as given by Dr Lacour, is full of melancholy 
interest : — 

"His weakness was so great, that he believed it incom- 
patible with life, and he constantly had the presentiment of 
approaching death. The arms were slow in their move- 
ments ; the right trembled continually, and the right hand 
was cold, and could be warmed with difficulty, although 

3b 



w 



M 



I 



SYMPATHETIC SORROWS. 



he wore very thick gloves. The left foot was habitually 
colder than the right. He walked without difficulty, but 
his step was slow and faltering. His face had grown thin, 
and his look proclaimed an inexpressible sadness ; the 
head hung upon the breast, and the entire person of 
the invalid, formerly so imposing, was greatly weighed 
down. He said to M. Bonnet, who regarded him with 
visible emotion, ' I am but the shadow of what I was, and I 
can scarcely recognise myself.' " 

M. Bonnet recommended that the sorrowful ideas which 
pre-occupied the mind of the invalid should be removed by 
every possible means — a recommendation, alas ! more 
easily given than realised. 

The severity of the weather at Lyons confined O'Connell 
to the house, thereby depriving him of whatever relief might 
have been afforded by outdoor exercise. 

During the journey O'Connell had hitherto evinced great 
listlessness and mental abstraction. Crowds followed him 
everywhere, testifying their reverence for his genius and 
his services, and their sympathetic sorrow for his sufferings. 
He passed along, heedless of their demonstrations, and 
scarcely conscious of their presence. Distinguished per- 
sonages presented complimentary addresses, which at 
another period would have gratified him ; but he now 
received them with apathy, and almost in total silence; 
his thoughts, apparently, far away from all such topics — 
pre-occupied, doubtless, by the rapid approach of his own 



M 
■ 



I 






dissolution. To a gentleman who tried to cheer him by 
expressing a hope of his recovery, he answered, " Do not 
deceive yourself; I may not live three days." 

On the 22d of April O'Connell left Lyons at noon, and 
reached Valence at five in the evening. The comparative 
mildness of the temperature afforded him some transient 
relief. On the 24th he left Valence for Avignon, where his 
friends were led to form fallacious hopes of his recovery by 
the rapid improvement which took place. " The invalid," 
says Dr Lacour, " took an active part in all our conver- 
sations." On the 3d of May, at Marseilles, " he conversed 
in the evening with a vigour and gaiety that he had not 
displayed since his departure from England." A delusive 
flash, alas ! to be speedily followed by death. 

On the 6th the illustrious traveller arrived at Genoa, 
where, for the first two days, his health still presented an 
improved appearance. On the third day he complained of 
a violent pain in the head. Other symptoms of a very 
alarming nature dispelled the hopes his friends had begun 
to cherish. His physicians were embarrassed by his posi- 
tive refusal to swallow any medicine, " even the most 
simple." 

O'Connell was accompanied and attended by a faithful 
servant, who, strange to say, died eventually as porter in a 
workhouse. His narrative of O'Connell's last days 6 cannot 



m 



« The writer is indebted to the Rev. John O'Hanlon, a Catholic priest, 
and a most accomplished writer, for this copy of Duggan's narrative. 




fail to be read with singular interest, and has never been 

published before : — 

" [Title on outside of manuscript] ' John Dnggan's Notes relating 
to thejast illness of Daniel O'Connell, Esq., M.P., a.d. 1847. 
Physicians' Prescriptions.' 
"[Page 1 has the heading] 'John Duggan, Aries, 1st May 1847' 
[in his own hand, then follows by the Rev. J. O'Hanlon]. 
" Daniel O'Connell's ' faithful Duggan,' at present porter in the 
South Dublin Union Workhouse, presented me with the following 
interesting Notes, compiled by him during the last days of the illus- 
trious Liberator. He told me he had a number of other notices of 
O'Connell's sayings and doings taken at the time of their occur- 
rence : but that the latter, loose memoranda, are now lost or 
destroyed. He has various keepsakes, objects formerly belonging to 
the greatest Irishman our country ever produced. Duggan made 
me a present also of the pencil used by O'Connell in taking notes 
on the last occasion he ever sat in the British House of Commons, 
and the steel pen and holder used by the great Tribune in London 
before his last departure for the Continent. 

" John O'Hanlon, C.C. 
" Dublin, S.S. Michael and John's, March 14, 1S62." 

" [Then follows in Duggan's writing] : — 

"March 1847. 
" Monday 22. — Sailed in Prince Ernest steamer, from Folke- 
stone for Boulogne, at 11.48 a.m. ; twenty-nine miles, two and a 



The original is now placed in the archives of the Royal Irish Academy. 
The copy, as given above, was made for this work by the Rev. Maxwell 
Close, a Protestant clergyman, and member of the Royal Irish Academy, 
to whom we are under many obligations. There is no alteration either 
in the spelling or the mode of expression. The observations in brackets 
are by the Rev. M. Close, as it is matter of interest to have such a MS. 
given to the public literalh . 



half hours. One hour and a half in the Customhouse. Hotel des 
Baines, four o'clock. Fares, 8s. and 6s. 

"Tuesday 23. — Started at 12.15 a.m. Samer, Cormont, Mon- 
trueil ; fifteen, nine, thirteen = thirty-seven kilometres. Dinner. 

"Wednesday 24. — Left at 11.15 a.m. Namport, fourteen; 
Bernay, nine; Nouvion, seven; Abbeville, thirteen = forty-three 
kilometres. Arrived at three o'clock. 

" Thursday 25. — Left by railway for Amiens. Forty-five kilo- 
metres in two hours. 

"Friday 26. — Left Amiens by rail for Paris at 11.30 o'clock. 
Seventy-eight miles in three and a half hours. Arrived at the 
Hotel Windsor at four o'clock. The luggage was not searched, 
through compliment to Mr O'Connell. 

"Saturday 27. — Thomas Hall called on Mr [O'Connell evidently 
omitted ; on second thoughts, Mr may be me]. 

" Sunday 28. — Paris. Seen the two Miss Conyngham's in the 
street. 

" Monday 29. — Paris. Mrs Conyngham, at her own request, 
was introduced by me to Mr O'Connell, as also Miss Conyngham. 
Mrs Conyngham said I was the best nurse-tender in the world, and 
that I had nurse-tended her father for years. Drs Cornel and 
Ollive are the physicians attending Mr O'Connell, and Mr Stephens, 
Rue Neuve, Luxembourg, the dentist. 

" Left Paris for Orleans, by rail, after dinner, at 4 o'clock p.m. 

"Tuesday 30.— To Port aux Moines, 13; Chateau Neuf, 13; 
Auyoer [?], twenty-three. Gien ; slept. 

"Wednesday 31. — Left Giun at 1.30 p.m. Briare, eighteen; 
Newvy, 14. Slept, (fee. 

"April. 



Cosne, fourteen ; Pouilly, 



"Thursday 1. — Three stages to-day, 
fifteen ; La Charite, thirteen — slept. 

" To Pogues, thirteen ; Nevers, twelve kilometres. 
" Saturday 3. — Nevers. Snow the last three nights. 
" East. 4. — Nevers. Mass in the hotel. 



,•■■' 



6, 



m 

■'•J, 



f 




" Monday 5. — Left for Magney, eleven ; St Pierre, 8 ; St Im- 
bert, ten ; Valleneuve, twelve ; Moulins, fifteen — slept. The 
peasantry have the most extraordinary bonnets I ever saw. 

" Tuesday G. — Bessay, fifteen ; Varennes, fifteen — slept. 

" Wednesday 7. — To Gerand le Puy, eleveu ; La Palisse, ten. 

" Thursday 8. — La Palisse [one]. % 

" Friday 9. — Started for Droituriere, eight ; St Martin, seven ; 
La Pacandiere, eight ; St Germain, twelve ; Roanne, twelve — slept. 
Last year a great part of this town was destroyed by the overflow- 
ing of the Loire, bridges and houses being swept away. 

"Saturday 10. — Left for St Symphorien, seventeen; Pain Bou- 
chain, fifteen : Tarare, twelve — slept. 

" Sunday 11. — Went to seven o'clock mass. You are accommo- 
dated with a chair for five cents. Started for Arnas, eleven ; 
Salvagny, nineteen ; Lyons, fourteen. The road yesterday winding 
through a mountainous district, the highest pass being 3000 feet 
above the sea, being cultivated to the highest summit, vines and 
fruit-trees. They are most careful of the water, stopping it in 
every hollow for irrigating the grass lands. 

" Lyons, Hotel de l'Uuivers, kept by Messrs Glover and Vuffray. 
They have been servants. Dr Viricel and Surgeon Bonny, Mr 
O'Coniiell's medical attendants. Frost and snow for several 
days. 

"19 [No day of week].— Mr O'Connell made a promise to me 
that, should he ever recover, he would mark his gratitude to me in 
a way I little thought of or expected, and that I should be for ever 
independent of servitude. He interrupted Dr Miley, in conversation 
with Dr Viricel, to repeat over again to him the same promise a 
second time, and binding himself thereto. The above came entirely 
from himself, without a single observation from me. Such promise 
signifies but little, for I have signed the will and codicils which, of 
course, exclude me in participation of any benefit arising from 
them. 

" 21. — Give, as my decided opinion, Mr O'Connell had passed the 



ss 



r 



LAST DATS. 



m 



crisis, and that he would be gaining ground every day, although 
slowly he would still be gaining. 

" Thursday 22. — After a stay of eleven days, left Lyons at 10.11 
a.m. by the Rhone to Valence, in five hours. Dr Lacour came a3 
Mr O'Coimell's medical doctor attendant. 

" Friday 23. — Remained at Valence. 

" Saturday 24. — Left for Avignon by the steamboat — arrived in 
six hours. 

" 25. — Mass in the house. Hotel de l'Europe good. Nt. from 
Lyons, 135 miles, eleven hours in two days, [thus] 

" 29. — After remaining five days at the city of the Pones, left by 
the steamer for Aries ; three hours steaming, but detained for six 
hours unloading and taking in merchandise. 

" Friday 30. — Remain at Aries, the ancient Rome of Gaul. I seen 
the Roman amphitheatre to-day, which remains very perfect, consider- 
ing the length of time since its foundation, and the soft stone it is 
constructed off, and which is cut with hatchets and saws. Also the 
remains of a splendid theatre, the pit and seats for the audience 
being quite perfect. And the Necropolis with some hundreds of 
stone coffins disinterred, with covers quite perfect. They seem to 
be raising others, where they are piled in, thick as paving-stones. 
Seen a great number of lizards amongst the stone coffins that are 
remaining in their original position. 

" May. 

" Saturday 1. — Aries. The wind too high to sail by the steamer. 

" Sunday 2. — Left Aries at 9.30 a.m. by steamer for Marseilles — 
5 hours ; went to the Hotel de l'Orient. 

" Wednesday 5. — Sailed at five o'clock p.m. in the Lombard, for 
Genoa, in 21.30 hours on Thursday. 

" 6. — Went to the Hotel Feder. Snow on the mountains along the 
Bay of Genoa ; remained 7th and 8th. Mr O'Connell went out in 
the carriage. 

" Sunday 9. — Mass in the hotel. Mr O'Connell had a bad night 






from the effects of an injection administered by Dr Lacour last 
night. 

" Monday 10. — No better. Leeches applied ; eat nothing to-day 
nor yesterday. 

" Tuesday 11. — Worse to-day. No food. 

" Wednesday 1 2. — No better. No food. Leeches to back of 
his ears. 

"Thursday 13.— Same. Same last — his voice almost gone — 
delirious. 

" Friday 14. — Blister to back of his head, 10.30 a.m. Delirious, 
his voice scarcely audible. Bled in the arm, eight o'clock p.m. 

" Saturday 15. — Extreme unction, three a.m. Cataplasms on his 
thighs and back, 9.30 a.m. Leeches on the temples at four o'clock 

P.M. 

[" On some letter paper inserted into the book Duggan's hand- 
writing.] 

" Sunday, May 9. — Kepeatedly said he could not live after the 
effects of the enema ; to be sure not to forget the message for Mr 
Morgan ; the Cyclopaedia Britannica ; and the teeth for Mr Brophy, 
&c. Had a bad night, and restless all .the day. 

" Monday 10. — Duggan, you are the only person I can depend 
on, do not let me be buried until after I am dead ; has taken a dis- 
like to the French doctor ; would not see the Italian ; quite soothed 
in conversation with Dr Duff. Leeches. No food to day nor 
yesterday. 

" Tuesday 11. — At twelve o'clock asked me had Mr Wise brought 
forward his motion, and who seconded it. That Wise was mad, 
and to call him should there be a division. No food ; worse to-day. 

"Wednesday 12. — Not better. Not to let the Frenchman come 
near him, for that he gave him something that burned his mouth 
and throat. Leeches to back of the ears. No food. 

"Thursday 13. — Voice scarcely audible. Took my hands and 
bade me farewell several times ; do not let them bury me till after 
I am dead. Incoherent. No sustenance. 

" Friday 14. — Worse. Blister back of the head. Bled. 




"Saturday 15.— Voice almost gone; called me byname several 
times in course of the morning. The cataplasms made him uncom- 
fortable ; he said I should take them off. [End of inserted paper— 
the book proceeds.] 

" Saturday 15.— Died without a struggle at 9.30 p.m. He took 
no food since Saturday last. I said nothing to Dr Miley of the 
promises made to me, should Mr O'Coimell return home. 

" Sunday 16.— Mr O'Couuell's body taken to the hospital at 9.30 
o'clock P.M. 

"Monday 17. — Left my measure for mourning ; posted a letter 
for Eliza, and one for J. Conlon — paid 2s. 8d. 
"Tuesday 18.— Inactive— blue devils all day. 
"Wednesday 19.— The body laid out in the church, and High 
Mass at twelve o'clock. Dr Miley, Mr Dean, and I attended. [I 
believe what I read as Mr Bean is Mr Dan—see below.] 

"Saturday 22.— Sailed from Genoa in Lombard at eight o'clock 
p.m. ; arrived at Leghorn in eight hours. Went on shore by seven 
o'clock. Dr Miley said mass at one of the churches. Returned to 
breakfast to the Hotel du Nord at nine o'clock ; started by the 
eleven o'clock train for Pisa. 

" Sunday 23. — Seen the Cathedral, Cemetery, Tower, and 
Baptistery. Returned by the one o'clock train. Dined, and sailed 
at six o'clock by the Lombard. Arrived at Civita Vecchia in ten 
hours. 

'■ Monday 24.— Breakfasted ; mass in the church. Started for 
Rome at a quarter to eleven a.m. Stopped two hours for dinner and 
to refresh the horses. Seen a great many fire-flies for the first time. 
Arrived at the Hotel Melouni at a quarter to eleven p.m. [Melouni 
thus spelled here.] 

" Tuesday 25.— Walked out for a short turn, but the heat being so 
intense, was obliged to return. Mr Meloni took me in his carriage 
to St Peter's at six o'clock. 

" Wednesday 20.— Walked out after dinner ; two o'clock found 
out the amphitheatre, the Forum, and the Pantheon, without asking 



LAST DAYS. 



a question. Went to an amphitheatre at six o'clock. Drama in the 
open air iu the same circular form as the Coliseum. 

" June 28 — Rome. 

" Grand Requiem Mass at St Andrews' for Mr O'Connell's repose 
with an oration by the Padre Ventura. 

"30. — A second mass, with the continuation of the oration. 

" July. 

" 1. — Left Rome at six o'clock p.m. — travelled all night. 

" 2. — Mr Dan, bilious attack at Rodificani. I slept in his room. 

" 3. — Able to go on at two p.m. Slept a [at .'] Sienne. 

" Sunday 4.— Started from Sienne at twelve o'clock ; in Florence 
at seven p.m. 

" 6. — I left in the Diligence for Leghorn at seven a.m. — arrived 
at one p.m. 

" 7. — No boat for Genoa yesterday. Started at six o'clock by the 
Nuova Columba (a dirty boat and a robbing crew) ; arrived at five 
a.m. [End of Duggan's writing.] 

[" Written by Rev. J. O'fL] Duggan heard O'Connell state to a 
gentleman on a certain occasion, that within O'Connell's memory, 
whilst living at Darrynane, the sea-weeds thrown on the shore 
differed in character and species at different periods. This was 
attributed by O'Connell to a change in the direction of the gulf 
stream in the Atlantic. J. O'H. 

[" Six prescriptions are pasted in the end of the book."] 

O'Connell was accompanied on this last journey by two 
of his sons and by his chaplain Dr Miley. During his 
6hort stay in Paris he was presented with an address by 
the Count de Montalemhert, from which it is evident that 
he learned to appreciate O'Connell more as years advanced. 
He said : 



H 



ru 



lr>> 




1 



■4 



" Your glory is not only Irish, it is Catholic. Wherever Catho- 
lics begin anew to practise civic virtues and devote themselves to the 
conquest of their civic rights, it is your work. Wherever religion 
tends to emancipate! itself from the thraldom in which several gene- 
rations of sophists and logicians have placed it, to yon, nfter God, is 
religion indebted. May that thought fortify you — revive you in 
your infirmities, and console you in the afflictions with which your 
patriotic heart is now overwhelmed. The wishes of Catholic France 
will accompany you in your pilgrimage to Rome. The day of your 
meeting with Pius IX. —when the greatest and most illustrious 
Christian of our age shall kneel at the feet of a Pontiff who recalls 
to our recollections the most brilliant period of Church history — a 
truly momentous event in the history of our time will take place. 
If, in that instant of supreme emotion, your heart should entertain 
a thought not absorbed by Ireland and Rome, remember us; the 
homage of the affection, respect, and devotion of the Catholics of 
France for the chief of the Church, could not be better placed than 
on the lips of the Catholic Liberator of Ireland." 

O'Connell's reply was necessarily brief: 

"'Gentlemen,' he said, 'sickness and emotion close my lips. I 
should require the eloquence ot your president (Montalembert) to 
express to you ali my gratitude. But it is impossible for me to 
utter all I feel. Know, simply, that I regard this demonstration 
on your part as one of the most significant events of my life.' " 

Thousands of persons called at, his hotel, but he was 

quite unable to receive visitors. Mr Berryer was one of 

the favoured few. At Lyons public services were made in 

all the churches for his recovery. Ou the 15th of May, Dr 

Miley wrote from Genoa — 

" The Liberator is not better ; he is worse — ill as ill can be. At 
two o'clock this morning 1 found it necessary to send for the Viati- 
cum and the holy oil. Though it was the dead of night, the Car- 




dinal Archbishop (he is eighty-eight years old), attended by his 
clerics and several of the faithful, carried the adorable Viaticum 
with the solemnities customary in Catholic countries, and reposed it 
in the tabernacle which we had prepared in the chamber of the 
illustrious sufferer. Though prostrate to the last degree, he was 
perfectly in possession of his mind whilst receiving the last rites. 
The adorable name of Jesus, which he had been in the lurbit of 
invoking, was constantly on his lips with trembling fervour. His 
thoughts have been entirely absorbed by religion since his illness 
commenced. For the last forty hours he will not open his lips to 
speak of anything else. The doctors still say they have hope. I 
have none. All Genoa is praying for him. I have written to 
Rome. Be not surprised if I am totally silent as to our own feel 
ings. It is poor Daniel who is to be pitied more than all." 

The Times' correspondent said in a letter, dated Genoa, 
May 18: — Towards three p.m. on Sunday, Mr O'Connell 
called his own man, and taking him warmly by both hands, 
to acknowledge the rare fidelity with which he had served 
him, he said, " As yet I am — I am, not dying;" but two 
mornings later, he called for Dr Miley, and said, " I am 
dying, my dear friend." His fear of being buried alive 
was singular and painful. More than once he earnestly 
entreated those around him to beware lest such a fearful 
catastrophe should occur. His serenity and patience in 
agonising pain was remarked by all who had the sad privi- 
lege of attending him. The holy name of Jesus, the Memo- 
rare and verses from the Psalms, were constantly on his 
lips. He had well known, and loved, and practised his 
religion during life ; it was now his consolation in death. 
" St Liguori's Preparation for Death," was found after his 



decease with marks of long and constant use. He was, 
indeed, too wise a man not to prepare himself well for his 
emancipation from the death of human life to the birth of 
unending existence. He who had been the instrument in 
the hands of God to obtain the liberation of millions of 
God's children from the chains which held them from the 
free exercise of their religion, as far as human chains could 
hold, he surely of all men could say with confidence — 
Liberavi animaia meam. 

His death was peace. How, indeed, could it be other- 
wise ? Since he jiassed from the stormy life in which it had 
been his duty to live and to work, with the holy name of 
the Saviour upon his lips, and invoking, in that mouth 
dedicated to the Mother of God, her protecting care. 

But the Catholic Church does not leave her children 
even when they cease to breathe on earth. She passes with 
them through the dark portals of the grave ; she waits by 
them in those regions of pain where all human dross is 
purged and refined so as by fire, where the awful justice 
of God lays its hand upon the soul, not in anger, but in 
mercy, to purify it for the Divine presence. 

By night and by day the faithful watched by the dead 
man's bier, some crying out, in the bitterness of their hearts, 
because the light of their life was quenched — 









f 



" Heu mihi, quia incolutus metis prolongatus est ;'' 



and others saying for him, and for their own poor souls, in 




vHfl 



766 



THE FAITHFUL BY HIS BIER. 



anticipation of that dread summons which must come to 
them also — 

" Domine, secundum actum meum, noli me judicare ; nihil dignum 
in conspcctu tuo egi ; idea deprecor magistatem luam : ut tu Deus 
deleas iniquitaiem nieam. 

" Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, in die ilia tremenda, quando 
coeli movendi sunt et terra, dum veneris judicare sseculum per 
ignem. Tremens factus sum ego, et timeo dum discussio venerit 
atque ventura ira, quando coeli movendi sunt et terra, — dies ilia, 
dies ir;e, calamitas et miseriaj, dies magna et amara valde, dum 
veneris judicare sseculum per ignem. 7 

Friar, and monk, and nun, surrounded him, and prayed 
still for his eternal repose. Then they took him to the 
Church of Our Lady Delle Vigne, for she whom he had so 
honoured in life would have him still in her keeping after 
death; and they offered for him that adorable Sacrifice at 
which in life he assisted so fervently and so frequently; 
and they sang that grand old chaunt the Dies Irce, the 
wail of souls beseeching their God to remember that He 
had died for them, and to pity and pardon them even 
while He punished and purified. 8 

The body had been embalmed previously, and the causes 
of disease were verified by the physicians. The heart was 



(4 

:Y w 






7 Office for tlie Dead at Matins. 

8 " Dies irse, dies ilia, 

Solvet sseclum in favilla ; 
Teste David cum Sybilla. 




deposited in an urn, as O'Comiell had directed in his will, 
with this inscription : — 

" Daniel O'Connell, natus Kerry, obiit Genuse die 15 Maii 1847, 
aetatissuae anno 72" — (Daniel O'Connell, born in Kerry, died on the 
15th May 1847, in Genoa, in the 72d year of his age). 

It was bequeathed to Rome — a touching memento of his 
life-long devotion to the See of Peter. This treasure was 
conveyed to its destination by Dr Miley and Mr D. O'Con- 
nell. When they arrived in Rome, they were presented to 
His Holiness Pius. IX. by Monsignore Cullen. " Since I 
had not the happiness of embracing the hero of Chris- 
tianity," exclaimed the Holy Father, " let me at least 
embrace his son. I have read," he continued, " with 
extreme interest the accounts of his last moments: his 
death was indeed blessed." 

O'Conuell's funeral obsequies were celebrated in Rome 
witli the greatest pomp and magnificence. Artisans, sculp- 
tors, painters, and architects, were employed for a week in 
VI making preparation for the funeral ceremonies. 

The students of the Irish College, with their venerated 
President, occupied the foremost place, and at the altar the 
mass was said for the repose of his soul. It was computed 
that from fourteen to fifteen thousand persons visited the 



1 



Ne me perdas ilia die, 
Quserens me sedisti lassua : 
Redimisti, orucem passus, 
Tantus labor non sit cassus." 




BEING DEAD, YET SPEAKETH. 



basilica during the two days. The walls were emblazoned 
with texts of Scripture, which were an evidence of the 
honour in which O'Connell's memory was held by the Holy 
See, as well as of her appreciation of his life. These texts 
were indeed remarkably appropriate.' 

Well might Father Mi ley say when writing to Ireland: — 

" You can have no notion of the spirit with which the Roman 
people, properly so called, have combined to render this magnificent 
compliment to the Liberator of Catholic Ireland all that it should 
be. Nor is it alone that the mere echoes of his renown have told 
on the ears of this posterity of kings and martyrs ; they have be- 
come indoctrinated with the great principles of our unequalled 
chief. If I ma}' so express myself, they have become thoroughly 
Irish. They now know our position — the perils over which we have 
triumphed, the perils still more menacing which we have yet to 
overcome." 

Thus, even iu death, did O'Counell serve the land he 
loved so well. 




9 " The cry of the children of Israel is come, up unto me, and I have 
seen their afflictions wherewith they are oppressed by the Egyptians. 
But come and I will send thee, that thou mayest bring forth thy peo- 
ple " (Exod. iii 9-11). "And God gave him wisdom and understanding 
exceeding much, and largeness of heart'' (3 Kings iv. 26). " I was clad 
with justice, and 1 clothed myself with judgment as with a robe and a 
diadem. I was an eye to the blind and a foot to the lame" (Job xxix. 
14, 15). "He was directed by God unto the repentance of the nation, 
and he took away the abominations of wickedness ; and he directed Lis 
heart towards the Lord, and in the days of sinners he strengthened t;od- 
liness " (Eccles. xlix. 3, 4). " Where there is no governor the people 
shall fall" (Prov. ix. 14). " In his life he propped up the house, and in 
his days he fortified the temple " (Eccles. i. 1). " Greater love than this 
no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends " (John xv. 13). 



"V 




His funeral sermon was preached by Father Ventura, 
who occupied four hours in delivering it. He has been 
called the Bossuet of Italy, and certainly for this only he 
has merited the name. 

" Never yet," he said, in his grand and sonorous accents, " felt a 
sovereign towards his people, or a general towards his army, or 
ruler for his subjects, or pastor for his flock, nay, or father for his 
children, more deeply solicitous, more tender, or more generous, than 
O'Connell for his beloved countrymen. He loved but them. For 
them only he lived ; for them only he breathed." 

And then, with a singular knowledge of Ireland, he 
added — 

" Who is this, who, alternately blushing and trembling, advances 
with a hesitating step to the electoral booth? He is an unfortunate 
tenant and the father of a family, who being incarcerated for debt 
has, with a most cruel compassion, been promised his liberty by his 
creditor, the landlord, on condition that he should vote against 
O'Connell ; and now, affection for his desolate family overcoming 
his feeling of duty towards his country and its Liberator, he is 
ready to vote as he is required. But what feminine voice is that he 
hears 1 ' Unhappy man ! what are you about duing 1 Remember 
your soul and liberty ! ' O woman I It was the voice of his wife 
— of that wife who preferred the victory of O'Connell to the libera- 
tion of her husband, or the comfort of her own children ! Its 
accents recalled the unfortunate man to himself, and for»ettin» that 
he was both husband and father, he remembered only that he was 
a citizen. He recorded his vote for the Liberator, and tranquilly 
returned to his prison. Rapidly was the sublime exclamation of his 
magnanimous wife repeated from one end to the other of the Island 
of Saints. It was engraven on bronze, and inscribed on the banners 
of the then existing National Association. And well it deserved to 
be ; for it compendiously relates the whole history of this heroic 

3c 



FUNERAL ELOGE. 



people, and expresses the feelings of the genuine Irish heart which, 
during three centuries, has sacrificed all to God and to its country 
— to religion and liberty. 

" Imagine, therefore, if such a people could consent that their 
Liberator and the father of his country, who had sacrificed to Ire- 
land all his private resources, his professional emoluments, and his 
repose, should not be supported by his country. Although the most 
Catholic, the most moral, courageous, and noble people in existence, 
they are also the poorest and most destitute ; and if, by the most 
' laborious toil, they can procure a bare sufficiency of potatoes for 
the support of life, they are more than satisfied — they are happy. 
Yet, nevertheless, O generous people ! how willingly have you de- 
prived yourselves of your last mouthful to add your mite to the 
tribute of your Liberator— a tribute thus swollen annually to the 
sum even of one hundred thousand crowns ! 

"By reason of this voluntary national tribute, Protestant insol- 
ence had assigned to him the title of ' king of the beggars.' — Poor, 
miserable, and most pitiful fatuity, which, while intending to mock, 
actually did him honour. For what sovereignty is more beautiful 
than that whose tribute is not wrung from unwilijng fear, but that 
is a voluntary, love-inspired offering ? What sovereignty is more 
glorious than that whose sword is the pen, and whose single artillery 
the tongue ; whose only courtiers are the poor, and its sole body- 
guard the affections of the people ? What sovereignty more bene- 
ficial than that which, far from causing tears to flow, dries them ; 
which, far from shedding blood, staunches it; which, far from immo- 
lating life, preserves it ; which, far from pressing down upon the 
people, elevates them ; which, far from forging chains, breaks them; 
and which always maintains order, harmony, and peace without ever 
inflicting the slightest aggression on liberty ? Where is the monarch 
who would not esteem himself happy in reigning thus ? Of such a 
sovereignty we may with truth say that which was said of Solo- 
mon's — that none can equal its grandeur, its splendour, its glory, and 
its magnificence : Rex jiacificas inajnijkatus est super onines reges 
tence/ (3 Reg. x. 23)." 



I 
fPl 

m 



?b 






SL^ka^iSv^ 3»_i 



RETURNS TO REST WIT II HIS FATHERS. 771 



He concluded : — 

"It was in pronouncing the most sweet names of Jesns and of Mary 
that at last was stilled and lost those powerful accents which had 
moved and shaken the universe— and then flew to heaven that grand 
and glorious spirit which had excited the admiration of the world. 
It was not permitted to him personally to appear at Rome. He 
came here, however, in spirit, and by his affectionate attachment, 
here too he died ; for his last dispositions were : ' My body to Ire- 
land, my heart to Rome, my soul to heaven ! ' What bequests, what 
legacies are these ! What can be imagined at the same time more sub- 
lime and more pious than such. a testament as this ? Ireland is his 
country, Rome is his Church, heaven is his God. God, the Church, 
and his country ; or, in other words, the glory of God, the liberty 
of the Church, the happiness of his country, such are the great ends 
of all his actions, such the noble objects, the only objects of his 
charity ! He loves his country, and therefore he leaves to it his 
body ; he loves still more the Church, and hence he bequeaths to it 
his heart ; and still more than the Church he loves God, and there- 
fore confides to Him his soul." 

O'Connell's remains were not removed to Ireland until 

August. Wherever they rested on the mournful journey 

special respect was paid to them. They arrived in Dublin 

in the Duchess of Kent steamer, and were received with 

almost royal honours. A sea-chapel had been erected on 

the deck, where prayers were offered during the voyage. 

The following words were engraved on the coffin-plate : — 

" Daniel O'Connbll, 

Hibernise Liberator, 

ad limina Apostolorum pergens 

Die XV. Maii, anno MDCCCXLVIi. 

Genua obdormiit in Domino : 

Yixit annos LXXI. menses IX dies IX. 

R. I P." 



m 




And so they bore him to his well-earned rest. What was 
it to him, then, that he was followed to his grave by thou- 
sands, that five prelates assisted at his obsequies in the 
cathedral church in Marlborough Street, Dublin, and that 
afterwards a magnificent monument was erected by a grate- 
ful people to his memory? The deeds that he did in life 
were of more importance to him now than all the honour 
that could be paid to him ; and though it was fitting that 
a tower should be erected to his memory in Ireland, and 
rarely carved marble should commemorate him in Rome, he 
has a better monument, and one infinitely more durable, in 
the hearts of the people for whom he lived, for whom he 
died, and to whom he was truly the Liberator. 




THE DEAD TRIBUNE. 

BY DENIS FLORENCE MACCAETHY, ESQ. 

"While the tree 
Of freedom's withered trunk puts forth a leaf. 
Even for thy tomb a garland let it be, 
The forum's champion and the people's chief." 

— Bvbon. 

The awful shadow of a great man's death 

Falls on this land, so sad and dark before, — 
Dark with the famine and the fever breath, 

And mad dissensions gnawing at its cora 
Oil ! let ns hush foul discord's manaic roar, 

And make a mourn' ul truce, however brief, 
Like hostile armies when the day is o'er ! — 

And thus devote the night-time of our grief 
To tears and prayers for him, the great departed chief. 




\*g 



h 



8 



IF 



m 



In ' Genoa the superb ' O'Connell dies — 

That city of Columbus by the sea, 
Beneath the canopy of azure skies, 

As high and cloudless as his fame must be. 
Is it mere chance or higher destiny 

That brings these names together % — One the bold 
Wanderer in ways that none had trod but he — 

The other, too, exploring paths untold, — 
One a new land would seek, and one would save the old I 

With child-like incredulity we cry — 

It cannot be that great career is run ; 
It cannct be' but in the eastern sky 

Again will blaze that mighty world-watched sun ! 
Ah ! fond deceit ! The east is dark and dun, 

Death's black impervious cloud is in the skies ; 

Toll the deep bell, and fire the evening gun, 

Let honest sorrow moisten manly eyes : — 
A glorious sun has set that never more shall rise. 

Brothers, who struggle yet in freedom's van, 

Where'er your forces o'er the world are spread, 
The last great champion of the rights of man — 

The last great Tribune of the world is dead 1 
Join in our grief, and let our tears be shed 

Without reserve or coldness on his bier : 

Look on his life as on a map outspread — 

His fight for freedom — freedom far and near ; 
And if a speck should rise, oh ! hide it with a tear ! 

To speak his praises little need have we — 

To tell the wonders wrought within those waves; 

Enough, so well he taught us to be free, 

That even to him we could not kneel as slaves. 



1 

Jfi 




Oh ! let our tears be fast-destroying graves, 
Where doubt and difference may for ever lie, 

Buried and hid as in sepulchral caves : — 

And let love's fond and reverential eye 

Alone behold the star new risen in the sky ! 

But can it be that well-known form is stark t 

Can it be true that burning heart is chill 9 
Oh ! can it be that twinkling eye is dark, 

And that great thunder-voice is hushed and still? 
Never again upon the famous hill* 

Will he preside as monarch of the land, 
With myriad myriads subject to his will, — 

Never again shall raise that powerful hand, 
To rouse, to warm, to check, to kindle, and command I 

The twinkling eye, so full of changeful light, 

Is dimmed and darkened in a dread eclipse ; 
The withering scowl — the smile so sunny bright, 

Alike have faded from his voiceless lips ; 
The words of power, the mirthful merry quips, 

The mighty onslaught, and the quick reply, 
The biting taunts that cut like stinging whips, 

The homely truth, the lessons grave and high, 
All — all are with the past, but cannot, shall not die 1 



* The Hill of Tara, where the greatest of " the monster meetings ' 
were held. 




PEDIGREE OF 

From the Pedigree compiled by the Chevalier O'Gorman, 
l. uvnn, 

i.D. 1337. 

a D 1345 ! m ' Mar ? aret > d. of Mshon Mooevey O'Brien, Prince of Thomand, by Una, d. of Phellm O'Connor, of Corcomroe. Geoffry, 1337-1315. 

3 ' 2l 0< \Jn. } m - Catherine, d. of Mahon O'Connor-Kerry. 

4. Daniel Fit*Geoffry,| m . Honora, .). of O'Sullivan-Beare. ringta. Rlckard. 

*• A b"i«6 } m - Mary ' d of Donal-an-dana M'Carthy, Prince of Deemond. 
*• A "o U JS } "*• '*>iana, <J. of O'Sullivan-mor. ' 

7. Morgan, m. Elizabeth O'Donovan, of Cloncahill. Hugh. 



y. Morgan MacHugh, 
of Bally 



pan .Macllugh, -, 
Uallyoar'ery, \m. Helena, d 
A.D. 1550. ) 



Rickard, 

surrendered 
Ballycarbeiy 

to English, 157i 



of Donal MacCarthy-mor. 
m. Joan, d. of Callaghan M'Carthy, of Carrignamult, County Cork. 



Im" Shurm b 1585 ' ™' Mar S aret > d - of Conor O'Callaghan, of Clunmeen, County Cork. 
0». 16 7, lug. p m!) 
Geoffry. ) 

of Balkcarbery, \\ 
oo. ^oth April 1635. ) 



Rlckard, Bishop, lC4tt 



IS. (a) Maurice, of Cahirbaroagh. 



Daniel, of Agport and Darrynane, Peter, of (6) John, of Charles, of 

tn Alicia Segrave. Clagliauemacquin. Ashlown. Ballyuegleragh. 



(/) John, ot Darrynane. also called of Agliavore. m. Elizabeth Conway, 
d. ot Christopher Conway, Clophaue, ami Joan Roche, of 
Dundiue, Couuty Cork. 



Sritn { n SSSS&L" } « ^ C/> ***«*■ 



Daniel, of Darrynane, ob. 1770. m Mary O'Donoghue-dhuv. 



Maurice, m Miss Cantillon. Morgan, m. Catherine, d. ot J. hn (p) Daniel Count Connell, Alice, m. — Segerson ; Mary, m. — O'Sullivan-Beare; Eliza, n 

Ob. 1825. O'Mullane. of Whitechurch. 6. 1743, a. 18^4. 5! 'Carthy, ot LMiterecough ; Anne, m. — Connell ; 

County Cork. — Baldwin ; , m. — Newton ; m. Alexr. M'Carthy, 



. 1 ?. a - ni ! 1 ', 01 - 1 m. Mary, d of Thos ) . I . ,. .„_ 3 " ha ■ Ji """ • Ma, 7. ™ Jeremiah M ■Cartie. of Woodirew, County Cork ; Honoria, m. Daniel 

... .'J?.,.,,, ,-'.\t, (O'Connell.ofTralea.J Ma "''ce, d 1,96. O Sullivan, ol Reendouegan ; Catherine, m Humphrey Moynihan I Ellen, m. Daniel Council, 

IKE LLliLKAIUK. ,' , __ , 



ofTralce; Bridget, m. Miles MacSwiney; Alii 



Maurice, b. 1803. 



Daniel, m, John. 

Isabella, d of 

Shine Lawler, Esq. 






Christopher Fitz-Simon, of Glaticullen, m. 1866, Agnes T . d. of Richard Leyne, of Tralee, formerly 
Captain T3J and 58tb Regiments, by Elizabeth, daughter of James U 'Connor-Kerry. 



O'CONNELL.* 

Corrected and Continued, with Kotes, by J. Leyne, Esq 



(A) Maurice, of Dunmaniheen, n. Ellen O'Cftllashau, ot Clomnt-en. 



Maurice, m Mary O'Sullivan-Beare. Geoffry. (t; Geoffry, of Kilkeeveragh, Dunmaniheen, and Tmlaghmore, m Elizabeth Conway, 

01 the Cloghane family. 



Ge"ffry, m. Bridget Segrave. (j) Maurice, of Tmlnphmore. m - T nne, d. of Thomas 

Blennerhassett, and Jane Darby, of Wales. 



— Morgan, P.P. Richard, m. - 



Maurice. Rickard. 



Rickard, S P . of 'I hnmas. of Tralee. m. Ellen, d of 
UouBtrirers. David Tuohv. of Tralee. and 

Ellen Fitzniaurice, of Lixuaw. 



Elizabeth, m Darby Marv TJ"nUb. m John 
O'Uync. of Tralee. O'Sullivan. 

Yenble. Arch O'Sullivan, 
P.P., Keuinare. 



Captain Rick. id. 89th 

Regiment, m Elizabeth, 

d. of Edward Tuoliy. 



Maurice m. Mary 
MaLouy, 



The LIBERATOR. 



(At) Elizabeth, m. .Tames 
OConnor.Kerry. 



For Notes to Pedigree, see p. 778. 




NOTES TO PEDIGREE. 



Bt Inquisition, taken at Tralee, 13th April 1C13, Murrough O'Connell held 
Ballycarbery under Sir Valentine Browne. 

(a), By Inquisition, held at Killarney, 27th September 1637, John O'Falvey, 
of Ballynehaw, is stated to have enfeoffed to Morris FiU Geoff ry O'Connell, the 
lands of Ballynehaw and Towrure, barony of lveragh, county Kerry, containing 
two carrucates of land. Maurice O'Connell, of Castleboruagh, was transplanted 
into Clare, where he received grants of laud in the neighbourhood of Mount 
Callan, and in the barony of Burren. He also acquired lands by leases, made in 
trust for him, to his brother, John of Ashtown,* who was law-agent to the 
Marquis of Ormonde. In deeds in Registers of Deeds Office, he is described as 
of Culesegane, county Clare. At Ennis, before John Gore, J. P., on the 21st 
December 1666. Examination of Murtha O'Gripha, of Roosca, parish of 
Dyshart, barony Inchiquin, county Clare, friar of the Order of St Francis .... 
that he and his associates did erect a house at Roosca aforesaid, in Brantry, in 
said county, for officiating. Saith Flan Brody is the guardian and head of their 
convent, and that the place was given them by one Morice O'Connel, gent., for 
that use ; and further, that said Flan went thence this morning to Morice 
O'Connel, knows not his business more than that he was to go thence to Lord 
Clare's ; that they have lived at Roosca, and have their convent there for three 
years past, and are of the convent of Inish Clowrode^ This convent was seized 
by Lord Carbery in 1006, as stated in a letter of his to the Duke of Ormonde. 

(6), John O'Connell, of Ashtown, by deed of 27th and 28th May 1667, granted 
part of Ashtown to King Charles II. He is mentioned in the " Letters of the 
Earl ot Orrery," vol. i. p. 141. 

(c), 1690— Lieutenant-Colonel O'Connell's regiment, the King's Guards, held 
out in Munster for James II. after the battle of the Boyue. 1691— Lieutenant- 
Colonel O'Connell caused Tyrconnell to leave the camp at Athlone for trying to 
prevent the French from sending troops, and for trying to dispose the Irish to 
treat. Besides Colonel Maurice O'Connell, the following members of the family 
were officers in the army of King James II. : — John, Maurice's brother, slain at 
Deny (Lieutenaut, King's Own Infantry) ; John, of Darrynane ; Maurice, of 
Denmanilieen ; Jeffrey, ensign ; Morgan, captain ; Teigue, ensign ; — — , quarter- 
master ; Charles, lieutenant-colonel. 

(rf), So-called in his petition and case, but his name most probably was 
Riokard. 

(e), John, Rickard, and John, heirs in remainder of Johu of Ashtown. 



Ge ( o / ff, T ° f f ^ n k " 8 !'' C0Unt . y - ° la, ' e - He an<1 WS m ° t,,er ( Katl ' e »»e. widow of 
Oeoffry, of Ballynehaw, and m deeds in Registry of Deeds Office, Dublin called of 
Anion.) are parties to several deeds of mortgage, 4c. Rickard, who was known 
as Lame R,ck, having got through his ancestral estates in Kerry and Clare 
died unnamed a London in 1739. On his death the Darrynane became the 
of lltown OConneUs - He "«• »»t born till after the death of John 

(/), John O'Connell, of Darrynane, married Elizabeth, daughter of Christopher 
Conway, of Cloghane, county Kerry, seventh son of Christopher Conway, of 
Uoghane, and his wife Joan Roche, of Dundine, county Cork, which last Chris- 
topher was the second sou of James Conway, and Elizabeth, daughter of Edmund 
Koe, of Cloghane, by his wife Alice, daughter of Jenkin Conway of Killoaelin 
by Mary, daughter of Sir William Herbert, of Colebrooke James Conway was 
the son of Christopher Conway.- by a daughter of Sir James Ware said Chris- 
topher being the son of Sir Fulke Conway, by Amy, daughter of Sir James 
Crofts, Lord Deputy of Ireland. Sir Fulke and his eldest brother, Viscount 
Conway were the sons of Sir John Conway, of Ragley, Worcestershire by 
Elinor daughter of Sir Fulke Greville, of Beauchamp Court, Warwickshire and 
described on his monument in Warwick Cathedral, in bis own words as "the 
servant of Queen Elizabeth, and the friend of Sir Philip Sidney " 

(a), Count O'Connell entered the French service in 1759. He became colonel 
of the regiment of Salm-Salm, was present at the capture of Portmahon in 1779 
and severely wounded at Gibraltar in 1782. He was a general in the French army' 
and at his death the eldest colonel in the English service. He died in 18- at 
his chateau, near Clois 

(A), Last heir in remainder to John of Ashtown and Colonel Maurice See 
his claim. 

(»), Geoffry, called Shera-no-moe-mor (Geoffry of the vast herds) was killed 
by a fall from his horse at Drung Hill. He was buried at Cahirciveeu, where the 
following legible portion of the inscription on his tomb was, some years since to 
be seen :-Here lyeth the body of Geoffry O'Connell . . . who had honour wit 
and virtue. He died . . . 1722, aged 68, probably 58 years." His wife was 

a daughter of Christopher Conway, of the Cloghane branch of that family a son 
or nephew probably of Christopher, the father-in-law of Johu O'Connell of 
Darrynane. 

0), Maurice, of Imlaghmore, married, in 1731, Jane, daughter of Thomas 
Blennerhassett, of Tralee, and his wife, Jane Darby, of Wales, which Thomas 
was the second son of Robert Blennerhassett and Avice or Alice, daughter and 
co-heir of Jenkin Conway, said Robert being second son of Robert Blennerhassett 
and Elizabeth, daughter of Captain Jenkin Conway, and Mary, daughter of Sir 
A\ illiam Herbert, of Colebrooke, which Robert was the son of" Thomas Blenner- 
hassett, the first settler of the name in Kerry. 

a), The second recorded union between the families of O'Connell and 
O'Connor- Kerry — the first having been the marriage, in 1393, of Geoffry 
O'Connell, with Catherine, daughter of Mahon O'Connor-Kerry. Baron Daniel 
O'Connell O'Connor-Kerry, colonel in the Austrian service, is the eldest surviv- 
ing son of James O'Connor-Kerry, and Elizabeth O'Connell, the Liberator's 



780 



APPEXD1X. 



cousin and sister-in-law. The Baron is mentioned in the notes to the " Annals 
of the Four Masters," as a chief representative of this once royal house. The 
Chevalier O'Gorman's pedigree is said to have been compiled by him for Count 
O'Counell, the Liberator's uncle, and was given by Sir William Betham, Ulster 
King, to the Rev. Charles James O'Connor-Kerry, uncle to the compiler. 

It would appear that the original name of the townland on which Darrynane 
House stands was Aghavore, or Aghagower, and that Darrynane applied probably 
only to the Abbey, »>r Abbey Island. 

The mother of the Liberator's wife was a Miss Fitzmaurice, of Lixnaw, of the 
same family as the Marquis of Lansdowne. 




COPY of the PETITION of Richard Connell. 

(.See Pedigree Xo. 16.) 

TO THE HoNBLE. TB.E KNIGHTS, CITIZENS, AND BURGESSES IN PARLIA- 
MENT ASSEMBLED, 

The Humble Petition of Anne IIardpenny, widow, in the behalf of 
Richard Connell, an orphan, 

Showeth, 

That the said Richard is grandson to Jeffrey Connell, 
Esqr., and sonn of Coll Maurice Connell, lata of Ivragagh, in the county 
of Kerry, in the kingdom of Ireland, who was slain in the battle of 
Aughrim, in the year 1690. That the said Coll Connell was possessed 
of an estate near the city of Dublin, called Ashtower, 1 which was left 
unto the said Coll Maurice Connell by his uncle J uo Connell, Counsell r - 
att-law, by will, for and during his natural] life, and to y e heirs male of 
his body, and, for want of such heirs, to others specified in the said will ; 
but the said estate became forfeited by the Coll being in the rebellion 
in Ireland : That the said Richard is the only surviving son of the said 
Coll Maurice Connell by Catherine his wife, daughter of Sir Edward 
Langton, of the West of England, and has been bred up a Protestant 
by y r petr who had the care of him from his infancy : That the said 



1 Properly Ashtown or Astonstown, property of the Hospital of St John of 
Jerusalem, without Dublin, devised, 22d Elizabeth to Edward Browne.— 
Eick. p. 132. Ashtown is close to the Phoenix Park. 




\] 



entailed estate, by the late act of presumppcon, is vested in trustees for 
forfieted estates in Ireland, and the said Richard rightfully entitled 
thereunto by virtue of the said will : That the said Richard is left a 
destitute orphan, wjb support or ffriend, and his relations, who are all 
Roman Catholicks of good estate in the aforesd kingdom, do neglect 
him as being educated in the Protestant religion, so that he is left in 
a very deplorable condition : Therefore yr Pet" - doth humbly pray this 
Honble. House will be pleased to take his case into consideracon, by 
granting a clause or provision for the said orphan, according to the 
nature of his case, in such bill as shall be thought fit to be brought into 
this Honble. House for the relief of those Protestant sufferers who were 
to take in their address the last session, or otherwise to ordn the same 
as to your great wisdom shall seem meet. And your petitionr shall 
ever pray, &c. Anne Hardpenny. 

Endorsed — " Mrs Hardpenny, No. 62." 

That y r Petr, Mrs Hardpenny, hath affirmed to us that ye contents 
of y e petn are true. We find that Maurice Connell, who stands out- 
lawed as sett forth in the pet n , never owned his marriage publickly, 
but was kept secret from his friends. 

(Carte Papers, v. 113, p. 67, 67a.) 



r./ 



No. 2. 
CASE op Richard Connell, an orphan. (British Museum.) 

That the said Richard is grandson of Jeffrey Connell, Esq., and the 
legitimate son of Colonel Maurice Connell, late of Ivragagh, in the 
county of Kerry, in the kingdom of Ireland, who was slain at the battle 
of Aughrim, in the year 1690 (1). 

That the said Colonel Connell was possessed of an estate of £6(X) per 
Milium, near the city of Dublin, called Ashtower, being a free gift unto 
the said Colonel Maurice Connell by his uncle John Connell, Councillor- 
at-law, by will (a copy whereof is ready to be produced),'for and during the 
term of his natural life, and to the heirs male of his body, and, for want 
of such heirs, to others specified in said will. But the said estate became 
forfeited to his Majesty by the said Colonel, who was outlawed post- 
mortem. 



That the said Richard is the only surviving son of the said Colonel 
Maurice Connell by Catherine his wife, the daughter of Sir Edward 
Langton, and has been bred up a Protestant by Mrs Hardpenny, who 
hath had the care of him from his infancy. The truth of all which 
appears by affidavit. 

That the said estate, by the late Act of Parliament, is vested in the 
trustees for forfeited estates in Ireland, and the said Richard lawfully 
entitled thereto by the said wall. 

. That the said Richard is left a destitute orphan, without support or 
friends, his relations, who are Roman Catholics of good estate in the 
aforesaid kingdom, neglecting him as being educated in the Protestant 
religion. 

That the last sessions of Parliament the said Anne Hardpenny peti- 
tioned in behalf of the said Richard, and was referred to the trustees 
for forfeited estates, who reported the allegations of the petition to be 
true, whereupon the said petition and the report, amongst others, was 
further referred to a committee of this Honourable House, who, after 
due examination, ordered the same to be considered in order to a settle- 
ment on the said orphan. 

Therefore, it is humbly prayed that this Honourable House will be 
pleased to take his case into consideration, by granting a clause or pro- 
vision lor the said orphan, according to the nature and singularity of his 
case, in such bill as shall be thought fit to be brought into this Honour- 
able House for the relief of those petitioners whose cases were resolved 
to be redressed here the last session. 



i 
I 



No. 3. 
INQUISITION on the ATTAINDER op Colonel Maurice 

Connell. (Public Record Office, Dublin.) 
By inquisition, taken at Tralee on the 1st August 1696, on the attain- 
der of Maurice Connell of Ballynehaw, he was found to have been pos- 
sessed in fee of the lands of Keenagh (126(1 acres), Bally McZorin (310 
acres), Skvlalrig and Bralrig (240 acres), Drumikeare (389 acres), Kan- 
burn, Ballyriaglerig (3 carrucates), Ballynehaw (1014 acres), Caherlear- 
ing, all in the Barony of Iveragh. 




EPITOME op WILL op John Connell of Ashtown. (Public 
Record Olliee.) 

My nephew Jeffrey Connell shall hold Ballynehaw during his natural 
life, said land to go at his death to my heir hereinafter named. My 
brother Charles shall hold all lands now in his possession durin<* his 
natural life, same after to his wife for her life, and after their deaths, 
Ballynagleragh and Canburren, to my said heir, being his ancient 
patrimony. I make Maurice, son to Jeffrey Connell, my sole heir, and 
for want of heirs to him, John his second brother, and for want of heirs 
to him, my nephew Richard and his heirs, and for want of heirs to hhn, 
my nephew John, brother to said Richard, and his heirs, and for waut 
of heirs to him, my nephew Maurice, and for want of heirs to him, my 
right heir. Dated 17th January 1680. 

Recites that, by deed of 23d December 1680, he conveyed all his 
estates, real and personal, to Sir Valentine Browne and Stephen Rice 
upon the trusts of his will. 

Probate to Sir Val. Browne, Maurice the heir being under age. 




No. 5. 

EPITOME op CLAIM of Maurice Connell of Denmanihan, 
Co. Kerry. 

Recites will of John of Ashtown. States that he (Maurice) is heir in 
remainder to said John, by the name of his nephew ; that Jeffrey Con- 
nell died in August last ; Charles, brother of John, is still alive ; that 
Maurice, son of Jeffrey, entered into possession of the lands, and con- 
veyed away Ashtown and Irishtown ; and that he and his brother John 
died before the Articles of Limerick, without issue ; and so did Richard 
about 1693. John, the brother of Richard, alive, and has no issue. 
Claimant is adjudged within the Articles of Limerick that Maurice, the 
son of Jeffrey, and his brother John, were attainted of high treason. 

This claim was referred to a commission, consisting of Messrs Dennv 
Bateman, Blennerhassett, Chute, and White, who sat at Tralee and 
decided that it was untenable. John, the third son of Geoffrey of 
Ballynehaw or Larnons, also preferred a claim under the same will." 

The Court of Claims sat from 1693 to 1703 at Chichester House, 
Dublin. 




O'CONNELL'S DUEL WITH D'ESTERRE. 

My uncle, the late Maurice Leyne, barrister-at-law, was present at the 
duel. He was then a student of Trinity College, Dublin. He told me 
that when it became necessary for O'Connell to leave the field, hi3 
friends proceeded to the high road to seek a vehicle, and that, seeing 
none, they called upon a gentleman, who rode up at the moment, to 
give them his horse, which he did. He turned out to be the late Mr 
Henry M'Can of Tralee, who was on his way from that town to Dublin. 
He was, of course, most glad to render a service to the Liberator, who 
mounted the horse and rode off. Mr M'Can was the father of the late 
lamented secretary to the Grand Jury, and himself held that post for 
some years. 

The following refers to the duel between John O'Connell of Grena and 
Richard Blennerhassett, which took place on the 19th January 1813. 
It is taken from a note-book of my grandfather, Maurice Leyne, M.D. 
"Attended John O'Connell of Grena from the 19th January J 813, when 
he received a desperate wound in a duel which he fought with Richard 
Blennerhassett at Crotto, to the 12th March 1813. May 5. — Saw him at 
Grena, when an abscess was formed in his neck very near the incision 
made by Surgeon Crumpe on Friday, March 5th, for the purpose of 
extracting the ball, which he succeeded in doing. The ball was very 
large, jagged, angular, and in one part lengthened and pointed like a 
spear. It lay deep at the left side of the wind-pipe, and in contact with 
the trunk of the left carotid artorv." 



m 






i :■-•/•■ 



O'CONXELL'S LAST VISIT TO DARRYNANE. 

I was one of those who accompanied the Liberator in September 1846 
in his last visit to Darrynane. I met him in Limerick, where he was 
entertained at a public dinner. A lady who came with me — a relative 
most lovingly attached to him — was sadly moved by the alteration she 
perceived in his appearance since the last time she saw him in 1843. I 
also noticed the change. He stooped, though not much, and the old 
and remarkable elasticity of step gone, he almost shuffled along the 
passage as he hurried to greet my companion. 

The party started next morning for Darrynane, via Killarney. Tom 



Steele, accompanied us as far as Newcastle, where we stopped for a con- 
siderable time, the Liberator calling on the Very Rev. Dean Coll, the 
parish priest. Tom Steele and I went with him. After we had been 
in the Dean's drawing-room for a short time, Tom whispered to me, 
" My young friend, it is more than possible that the august Liberator 
desires to discuss with my venerable and sainted friend, Dean Coll, 
matters of the most sublime importance ; and I think you and I should 
therefore take leave of the Very Reverend Dean, and leave him and 
O'Connell to discuss the affairsof Ireland." So Tom and I returned to the 
hotel, where we awaited the Liberator. Shortly after leaving Killarney 
the next morning, the Liberator said to me (lie and I were the only occu- 
pants of the back part of the Repeal coach), " Tell me, my dear, when 
it is twelve o'clock." When that hour arrived, I informed him of it. 
He took off his travelling cap, while lie blessed himself reverently, and 
then repeated to himself what I knew to be the Angelus. He talked a 
great deal, and told me numberless stories about the localities through 
which we passed, and the inhabitants, rich and poor, and expressed 
unbounded admiration of the lovely view from the '-police barrack 
road." When we were between West Cove and Darrynane, a very 
serious incident occurred. The district doctor met us in his gig in a 
narrow part of the road, and, while hat in hand he greeted the Libera- 
tor with a cheer, forgot to guide his horse, who, wandering into the 
middle of the way, forced the postillions of the coach into the side of the 
road, where the ground was so very soft, that the wheels in a moment 
sank over the axles into the earth. The coach toppled over so as nearly 
to be overturned, and the Liberator uttered a cry. I at once jumped 
from the roof to the ground, and seizing a ladder, placed it against the 
coach, so that he could descend, which he did. When all was right, 
and we were again on our way to Darrynane House, he thanked me 
for what I had done, and complimented me on my promptness and 
activity. I was greatly moved by the sense of the peril though which 
I believe he passed, for if the coach had been overturned, 1 am sure 
that, considering his then condition of health, the consequences to him 
might have been very disastrous. 



In Munster the O'Connells gave their name to the extensive district 
of Hy-Conal-Garva, comprising nearly the whole barony of Connelloe, 

3d 



while in Scotland they are traced in the branches and achievements of 
the MacConnells, Lords of the isles. 

A.D. 355. — Conal of the Swift Horses wa3 King of Munster. 

432.— Conal was one of the first princes baptized by St Patrick. 

Soon after the arrival of the English, the ancestors of the Earl of 
Desmond acquired large possessions in Limerick, Cork, and Kerry ; 
among others Connelloe, stated to contain upwards of 100,000 acres, and 
to have been ceded by the sept of O'Connell in consideration of grants 
in Kerry and Clare. 

1453. —A survey was made, entitled the Rentyll de O'Connell, com- 
piled to show the extent and services of the ancient seignory of the 
O'l !onnell family, such as acres of mines then wrought there. 

1646.— Richard O'Connell, Bishop of Ardfert. 

1650. — John O'Connell, Bishop of Ardfert, author of " The Dirge of 
Ireland." 

1667. — John O'Connell, styled by Lord Orrery a "notorious rogue 
and Tory," taken by his orders in the county Limerick. Being led by 
a rope, he jumped down a high bank and got away. Lord Orrery had 
him taken afterwards in Kerry, "after mass was done." In the records 
after the rebellion of 1641, there are various documents relating to the 
rights and properties of the O'Connell families and others, that evidence 
their attachment to the Stuarts in the year 1688.— (John Dalton in 
Hibernian Magazine.) 

The progenitor of the O'Connells was Conaire II., King of Ireland at 
the commencement of the first century, through Carbrie Riada (called 
Reuda by Venerable Bede), Prince of West Munster, and son of that 
monarch by his wife, daughter of Coer of the Hundred. Battles. 

The O'Connells were part proprietors, with the O'Falveys and others, 
of the territory of Corca Dhubue. Shortly anterior to the English 
invasion, they possessed the barony of Magouiby ; but about the eleventh 
century the. TJi Donchadha (O'Donoghues) settled in Magouiby, and 
drove the O'Connells into Iveragh, where they were seated at Bally- 
carleery, near Cahirciveen. — (" Book of Rights," note.) 

The O'Connells were High Chiefs of Magle O'g-Couchiun (Magouiby). 
— (" Battle of Magh-Lena," note.) 




LANDS HELD BY THE O'CONNELLS ABOUT THE 
YEAR 1632. (Sir William Petty.) 

Parish of Cahir. 
Maurice of Calheriearnagh, Peter, and John. — Oohanebanachane ; Clag- 
han M'Quin (now CastJequin) ; Keanlewoun, 1570 acres; Cahir- 
civeen, 100 acres ; Garrane, West, and Broome. 

Parish of Valentia. 
Peter O'Connell and Muiragh MacOwen. — Enery ; Cnoile. 

Parish of Killcuilagh. 
Maurice O'Connell. — Ballynaglerig ; Ballvnehaw ; Killonaglia ; 
Juisto ; Tfearglinalias ; Puffin Island ; Kilkeoeragli ; Patlikeane. 
Daniel M'Geoffrey and Maurice O'Connell. — Agliort, 132 acres. 

Parish of Killerane. 

Maurice O'Connell of Caherlearnagh.— Ballyneliaw, 640 acres; 265 
acres ; 103 acres. 

Parish of Droinod. 
Maurice and Murragh O'Connell. — Kuiagh, 620 acres 
John O'Connell of Dublin. — Dromeragh ; Killinactoine and Malin ; 

Skylaluff; Bryalugg ; Kanigg. 
Maurice O'Connell. — Ilaneboy, 1168 acres; Caherlearnagh, 300 

acres ; Murisk, 1130 acres ; Spunkane, 560 acres. 
diaries O'Connell, Shily ni Dermod, and John O'Connell.— Ilaneboy, 

1060 acres (part of). 
John O'Connell of Dublin. — Barkeenagh, 2415 acres. 
Maurice O'ConuelL — Inneshlusiuulty ; Drnmlaghort. 



THOMAS MOORE ON O'CONNELL. 
" Feb. 1831. — In leaving Bangor, where we dined, were joined by a 
gentleman and his wife ; proved to be Staunton, editor of the Dublin 
Morning Rajister. Gave me the first intelligence, which he had himsell 
just received, of the arrangement between O'Connell and the Govern- 
ment on the subject of the pending trials ; seemed to think it very 



much of a giving-in on the part of his brother agitators, and was 
evidently not a little pleased at it. Said they had been driving the 
machine too fast, and had come to a point where it was necessary, for 
their own and the country's safety, to pull up. He had himself been 
obliged to come to Wales out of the way of the law, and was now 
returning, as be told me, to avail himself of the amnesty he seemed to 
anticipate for all agitators. . . . Same conversation with old Peter 
Burrowes. Agreed with me in opinion that O'Comiell had done more 
harm to the cause of liberty in Ireland than its real friends could repair 
within the next half century, and mentioned what Grattan had said of 
him, that ' he was a bad subject and a worse rebel.' This is admirable, 
true to the life, and in Grattan's happiest manner. The lurking appre- 
ciation of a good rebel which it. implies is full of humour. . . . When 
O'Connell, in his last speech on Sunday, said, ' I am open to convic- 
tion,' some one in the crowd said, ' And to judgment, I hope,' (in allu- 
sian to the trials lie had slipped himself out of). . . . Galled upon Mr 

■ , the editor of the Freeman's Journal. . . . Talked of the Repeal 

question. . . . Told him frankly, and at some length, my opinion of the 
injury that has been done to the cause of Irish liberty by this premature 
and most ill-managed effort of O'Connell's. Time, and the spirit rising 
in England, as well as all over Europe, is fast ripening that general 
feeling of independence, of which Ireland, at her own time, may take 
advantage. The same principle is also in full progress towards remov- 
ing, without any effort of hers, some of the worst grievances that weigh 
her down. The Church, for instance, which would be just now fought 
for against any such attack as O'Connell's, with the whole Protestant 
force of the Empire, would, if left to the natural opposition of the 
revolution principle, be put aside in due time without any difficulty, 
England herself leading the way by getting rid of, or at least loweringj 
her own Establishment. This was the gTeat struggle for which the 
energies of Ireland ought to have been reserved. In assailing the enor- 
mous abuses of the Irish Establishment, Catholics would have been 
joined by Dissenters, and in the pursuit of this common object, that 
amalgamation would have taken place between them, that nationalised 
feeling, without which (as O'Connell's failure has shown) it is in vain 
to think of making head against England. ... To the castle at seven. 
Lord Anglesey leaned upon me in to dinner. . . . Abundance of conver- 
sation between us about the state of Ireland, O'Connell .... &c. &c." 




"Sept. 1830.— Cassidy showed me a letter to him from O'Connell on 
the proposed system of agitation, which he had just answered, telli 
O'Connell that he thought the Repeal of the Union ought not yet to be 
brought forward . . . that if the question of Repeal was to be urged, lie 
(O'Connell) would do it more harm than good by putting himself at the 
head of it." 

" 18th May 1829.— Went to the House of Commons early. ... An 
immense crowd in the lobby, Irish agitators, &c. The House enormously 
full. O'Connell's speech good and judicious. 

" 19th. — Called upon O'Connell to wish him joy of the success of his 
speech ; told him how much Lord Lansdowne was delighted with it." 

"Feb. 1829.— Thence to call on O'Connell at Batt's. The waiter told 
me that there came about forty or fifty poor devils of Irish there every 
day with petitions to the great Dan. Found O'Connell, Mr Bellew, Sir 
T. Esmonde, O'Gorman, and a priest. O'Connell, showing me a packet 
just arrived from Charleston with contributions, said, ' It is these things 
have done it.' ... He then proceeded to say that the case reminded 
him of his youthful days, when he was a great visitor of the theatre, 
and when, being always of an aspiring disposition, he used to choose the 
loftiest situation in the house ; that there he used to observe that the 
gratuitous part of the audience were the most clamorous and applau- 
sive ; and accordingly came to the conclusion, that ' if free admissions 
were not allowed, not only would the theatre be proportionately thinner 
but (what would be a serious grievance) bad acting would go without 
applause.' — Memoirs etc., by Lord John Russell. 



JOHN BURKE. 

In the Kerry Magazine for September 1656, there is a short memoir 
of John Burke, who was born in Tralee about the year 1744. He went 
to Sorbonne for his education, but on his return to Ireland became a 
classical teacher. He succeeded admirably, but a jealous rival threatened 
to ruin him by enforcing the Act of Parliament which forbade the Irish 
either to teach or to be taught. Such was the miserable state of Ireland. 
Burke was then engaged by Mr Morgan O'Connell of Iveragh, privately, 
to educate his sons as far as he dare. The remote locality in which 
he lived favoured concealment, and Mr Burke taught the youn<> 



O'Connell and his brothers for several years before they went to St 
Omer. 

Burke was eventually appointed hearth collector, and died on the l'2th 
October 1799, at Liscarroll, in the county Cork. 

The information contained in this note was not received in time for 
the earlier part of this work. We are indebted to Mr Hugh Burke, of 
the Custom House, Dublin, for this information. This gentleman is 
a grand-nephew of the Mr Burke to whom O'Connell was indebted for 
his earliest education. 




w 






1 I 



J 



■.'Wfc 



INDEX. 



Abbey, Mount Melleray, and its monks, 
629 ; receives O'Connell, 6:52. 

Act, tlie, of the 6th George I., repeal 
of, 145, 146. 

Agitators, the, and the Government, 
v.&3. 

Altamont, Earl of, and his associates, 
212. 

Alviinley, Lord, and O'Connell, 612, 
613. 

America, English contempt for, 95, 97; 
Chatham on, 96; Johnson on, 97; 
first Congress, 97 ; Declaration of In- 
dependence, 98 ; and Ireland, 98 ; ap- 
peals to Ireland, 99 ; Irishmen in, 99, 
100. 

Anecdotes, Maurice O'Connell and the 
unshaven soldier, 30 ; Dr Smith and 
O'Connell's grandfather, 31 ; the 
Crelagh receiving sentence of death, 
39 ; Denis O'Brien and the judge, 
40; O'Connell and the Tralee ballad- 
singers, 41 ; Father O'Grady and 
Denis Mahony, 43 ; Father O'Grady 
charged with being a " Popish 
priest," 44 ; O'Connell and his sen- 
sitiveness to disgrace, 46 ; O'Connell 
mistaken for an Englishman, 48; 
Louis XVI., 08 ; schoolboy quarrel at 
St Omer, 70 ; John Sheares and the 
hangman, 70 ; the O'Connells and 
the tricolor cockades, 84 ; Britain 
beaten by tailors and cobblers, 97 ; 
Thompson, the Iiish Secretary of 
Congress, and Franklin, 99 ; O'Con- 
nell and Cousin Kane, 113 ; " had 
they portable water ? " 1 16 ; Lord 
Clonmel and bookseller Byrne, 143 ; 



"scoundrel enough to die or not, 
as it suits him." 143; "would rather 
be a chimney-sweeper.*' 143: Lord 
Clonmel and the Broluaduff pro- 
perty, 144 ; the honest Protestant 
barber, 144; "the Canny'' and the 
scourges, 193 ; Mrs Leadbetter and 
the soldiers, 193, 194 ; the "share 
of a pint of whisky," 202 ; Checkley 
and the witness to an alibi, 203, 204 ; 
O'Gradv ami the noisy court-house, 
205 ; O'Grady and the stuffed owl, 

205 ; O'Grady and Purcell O'Gorman, 

206 ;, O'Gorman convicted of melo- 
dious practices, 206 ; lesson in cow- 
stealing oratis, 207 ; Jack of the 
Roads, 208 ; O'Connell, Grady, and 
the corporal, 208, 209 ; Grady and 
the five soldiers. 210 ; O'Connell and 
the will case, 249 ; Lord Norbury and 
his "racket court," 249; his lord- 
ship and the case against Sterne, 250; 
"Ay, give him rope enough," 250; 
Lord Norbury bearded by O'Connell, 
251, 252 ; O'Connell and the grate- 
ful highwayman. 253 ; O'Connell 
and the blockhead bankrupt, 254 ; 
O'Connell and Sergeant Lefroy, 259, 
260 ; Lord Plunket and the kites, 

261 ; Curran and Lord Clare, 261 ; 
Curran and Judge Robinson, 261 ; 
Croker and the dwarf O'Leary, 261 ; 
Croker and Tom Goold, 261 : O'Con- 
nell and Judge Day, 262 ; Bully Egan, 

262 ; Judge Boyd and Grady, 263 ; 
O'Connell and Baron M'Clelaud, 263 ; 
Parsons and his hatred of attorneys, 
263, 264; Judge Foster and Denis 



f.1 




Halligan, 204 : Mrs O'Connell, when 
a girl, ami Hands the jailer, 206 ; 
" My Mary cross?" 266; O'Connell'a 
fondness for his children, 26fi, 207; 
Judge Fin'ucane and the schoolmaster 
O'Connor. 20-. 269 ; John Kengh and 
Pitt, 308, 309; Captain Grose and 
the butcher, 320 ; Jerry Keller and 
Baron Smith, 390; Jerry and Nor- 
cott, 390 ; Lord Clare and suicide of 
Baron Power, 391 ; suicide of Croslrie 
Morgan, 392 ; Barnewell and tlie 
lottery ticket, 393 ; O'Connell ami 
the bank notes. 393, 394 ; O'Grady 
at the play, 394; Parson Hawkes- 
worth and bis lady, 395 ; the two 
brothers and Judge Day, 390; the 
eldest brother and tlie jailer, 397; 
the old Dublin Evening Post and the 
Kerry lad, 39S, 399: O'Connell's 
power of attention, 404 ; O'Connell 
and Mr Hedges Eyre, 404, 405 ; the 
physician and his expenses as a wit- 
ness. 405 ; the Duke of Norfolk and 
Dr Milner, 425. 420; the Duke of 
Leinster and the Jesuits, 429 i )'< , 1 
and Dr Kenny, 429. 430; Lord 
Chatham and the English funds. 
430 ; Bageual at seventy-eight, 433 ; 
Bagenal and Queen Charlotte, 434; 
D'Esterre with the rope round liis 
neck, 430; Judge Day and Barney 
Coile, 440, 441 ; O'Connell and 
Major M'Namara, 441, 442; O'Con- 
nell and Jerry MacCarthy, 442; 
O'Connell and George IV., 475 : Mr 
Kux, Mrs Fitzherbert, am! George IV., 
470 ; the Duke of Wellington and tlie 
Beefsteak Club, 479: O'Connell ami 
Flood, 487, 488; "very sore at 
heart," 489 ; Dr Doyle examining tlie 
Lord's Committee, 528; Lord Augle- 
sea ami bis life-preserver. 50:;. 504 ; 
O'Connell and Doberty, 57s ; < )'( ', n- 
ncll and the sonl of Hen. v VII., OOG : 
O'Connell and the guide at Canter- 
bury Cathedral, 007, COS ; O'Connell 
and Mi Raphael, 010 ; O'Connell and 
Sergeant Ryan, 031 ; O'Connell and 
tlie Repealers at Cork, GSl ; and tlie 
Repealers at Limerick, GSl ; M'Nally 
ami Parsons, G82 ; the Irish priest 
ami the peer, GSG ; O'Connell and 
Joseph Tease, C9G ; O'Connell and 
the rising of the nation, 726 ; O'Con- 
nell in prison and the noble lord, 
730. 



Anglesea, Marquis of, and Dr Doyle, 
527 ; and the monster meeting at 
Ennis, 548 ; advice to the Catholics, 
and recall. 503 ; his unpopularity, 

503 ; and his stick, 504 ; proclama- 
tions against repeal, 595; and the old 
ascendency, 595 ; tranquillising Ire- 
land, 596. 

Anti-Union, the, its chief contributors, 

229. 
Aristocracy, the Irish Catholic, moral 

cowardice, in connection with the 

Catholic claims, 434, 435 ; and 

O'Connell, 409. 
Association, the Catholic (the first), 

action of Government to suppress, 

331, 332 ; first interference with, 

332, 333 ; and Mr Pole, 333, 334 ; 
second attempt to dissolve, 341 ; ob- 
ject of, 342 ; further interference 
with, 343-347: (the second) projected, 
490; its organisation, 491 ; first meet- 
ing, 492, 493 ; difficulties at first in 
mustering a quorum, 493; anecdote 
of O'Connell, 494 ; budget, 494 ; the 
principal difficulty connected with 
it, 495; grand aggregate meeting, 
497, 498 ; King's speech on, 500 ; bill 
brought in to suppress, 501 ; alarm 
as to supposed diabolical aim of. 501, 
502 ; accused of levying an unauthor- 
ised tax. 503 ; Lord Brougham on, 

504 ; Edinburgh Review on its depu- 
tation to London. 504 ; a new. formed, 
50"! ; its programme. 508, 509; com- 
mittee of deliberation, 512; first 
great meeting, 513. 

Paginal. King, his duelling propensi- 
ties ami devotion to good cheer, 433, 
434. 

Bar, the, and the Union, 226-22S. 

Barnewell, and the lottery -ticket, 393. 

Barrett, Mr 533. 713. 

Bathurst. Archdeacon, and Repeal, 709. 

Bavaria, King of, letter on O'Connell, 
G94. 

Beauforts, the, of Waterford, and 
O'Connell, 5S1. 5S2. 

Bentinck, Lord George, bill of, 751. 

Beresfords, the, 169, 171, 226. 

Berkeley on the Irish aristocracy, 3S4. 

Bill, the Coercion, passed, 603 ; Pal- 
merston on, 603; compensation for, 
005. 

Bismarck, and his politics, xxvii. 

Boroughmougering, 219, 220. 





Boyd, Judge, and Grady, 202, 263. 
Bribery, parliamentary, 147; of the 

press, 148, 149 ; by granting peerages 

and money, 151, 152 ; Grattan on 

system of, 151, 152 ; 218. 
Brigade, the Irish, thanks of Louis 

XVIII. to, 53; Duke of Fitz-Jame» 

on, 53; and Lord Castlereagh, 53. 
Brans wickers, the, and the Lord-Lieu- 

tenant, 560. 
Btirgoyne, General, letters of, 146, 

147. 
Burke, "ii the state of France, 67; at the 

debate on the Stamp-duties, 91 ; on 

the Americans, 92, 93 ; his brother 

Dick, 11(1. 117 ; on relaxing the penal 

code, 133, 134. 
Burke, William, the Doneraile courier, 

57o. 
Burton, Judge, 712, 718. 
Bute, Earl of, and George III., 89; his 

administration, 90. 
Butt, Isa.,c, note by, 701, 702. 
Bymn, Lord, on George IV. and his 

welcome in Ireland, 477. 



Cambridge, Du'u 



the Irish. 



the cold and cruel," 415, 



Camden, 
410. 

Canning in power, 514 ; death of, 519. 

Ca^iel, Lord, viceroyship, 21. 

Capes, Mr, his article in the Contem- 
porary Review, xvii. ; his preface to 
the life of St Frances, xviii. 

Caroline, Princess, and the Peeresses, 
128; as Queen, refused coronation, 
469 ; death and burial, 470, 471. 

Castlereagh, Lord, on the unconstitu- 
tional practice of independent voting, 
223 ; on tenderness towards the 
Catholics, 243 ; " most private " 
letter, on the necessity of Catholic 
Blipport towards curving the Union, 
244 ; O'Connell on, 285, 288 ; delibe- 
rate lie, 325. 

Catholics, and their religious rights, 
xxvi. ; loyalty of, 79; the English 
Conservative, 80, 81 ; the Irish not 
Conservative, 81, 82 ; the English 
and O'Connell, 83 : recognition of, as 
British subjects, 121 ; couc.liation of, 
by Government, 125 ; deputation of, 
with address to the King, 101 ; upper 
classes of, 17.5 ; and the Union, 222 ; 
resolutions of a meeting of, in Dub- 
lin, 232, 233 ; systematically de- 



ceived, 244 ; and the Government, 
270; the upper class, laity, 274; 
O'Connell, on the emancipation of, 
27S ; taught by O'Connell to change 

I petition into demand, 285; meeting 
of, in Dublin, to petition, 287 ; 

j of the upper class bribed, 31 17 ; 

I lower and upper classes of, 314, 
315; persecuted, 314-316; entertain- 
ing Protestants, 330, 331 ; addressing 
the Prince of Wales, 334 ; petition 
for dismissal of Pole, 337 ; disastrous 
political divisions among, 340, 341 ; 
a triumph, 342; worldiness among 
the English, 424, 425 ; and their un- 
compromising fidelity to the Church, 
461 ; their jealousy of concessions, 
461 ; fidelity to their oaths, 405 ; 
and Government dictation, 468 ; and 
the English Radicals, 477. of the 
upper class and O'Connell, 685 ; Eng- 
lish, and O'Connell in prison, 731. 
Chalmers, Dr, on O'Connell, 695. 
Charles I. and his Irish subjects, 119. 
Charlemont, Lord, his conversion, 128, 
129 ; his patriotic zeal, 139 ; his letter 
on the Whigs, 135, 136 ; and North- 
ern Whig Club, 159. 

Chatham, 93; dying testimony, 96; 
and the English' funds, 430. 

Checkley, the rogue, 203-205. 

Church, Orders of, and the charge of 
intellectual inactivity, xxxviii. ; the 
Catholic, Conservative, 77. 79; Alison 
on. 77. 78; Guizoton, 78; clergy of, 
in Fiance, 80; aud her teaching. 270, 
271 ; learning in, 271 ; her priesthood, 
272, 273 ; granting of faculties in, 466. 

Claddagh fishermen, the, xii. 

Clancartv, Lord, and the "miserable" 
Irish, 546, 547. 

Clare County, O'Connell stands for, 
542, 546 ; election agents, 546 ; con- 
sternation in England, 510; Palmer- 
ston on the occasion, 548; scene at 
the hustings, 549, 550 ; the polling, 
551, 552; return of O'Connell, 552; 
effect of the news in England, 556, 
558 ; O'Connell unseated aud re- 
elected, 569, 575. 

Clare, Lord, his views on mixed educa- 
tion at Mayuooth, 275, 277; aud 
Baron Power, 391 ; character, 392 ; 
opinion of tin- Catholics. 393. 

Clergy, the Protestant, 272, 273. 

Clergy, the Catholic, and oroer, 174; 
aud the Union, 220-222 ; tho Pro- 



m 1 

m 




testant Bishop of Meath on, 302, 
303 ; soldiers under orders. 466, 467 ; 
and the right of administering the 
last sacrament, 4D7 ; and the Catholic 
Association, 491, 519. 
Clifford, Lord de, on the Union, 223. 
Clonmel, the Earl of, notices and 

anecdotes of, 143,144. 
Club, the Northern Whig, its esta- 
blishment and political prejudices, 
159, 100 ; Lord Clare's nickname for, 
160; demise of, ltt). 
Club, the Beefsteak, unheard-of inter- 
ference with, 479 ; their revenge. 
480. 
Cobbett, William, O'Connell on, 305, 

306. 
Coile, Barney, and Judge Day, 440, 

441. 
Colchester, Lord, on O'C'onncll, 505, 

.VIS. 
College, Trinity, 33, 34; address of 

students to Grattau, 173, 174. 
Colleges, Irish, on the Continent, 71, 

72 : at Douay,72. 
Convention, the Dungannon, 162, 163. 
( loinmission, the I levon, 741. 
Controversy, the Pope and Maguire, 
497 ; O Connell's remarks at the dis- 
cussion, 497, 498. 
Conway, the traitor, 69, 70. 
Cooke, Dr, challenge to O'Connell, 

684. 
( lornwallis, Lord, and state of Ireland, 
181 ; and excesses of the military, 183, 
184 ; accusation against, 1S4 ; letter 
of, on English misrule, to Duke of 
Portland, 185, 186; on government of 
Ireland, 21S, 219 ; letter to Bishop 
of Lichfield on the state of Ireland, 
219 ; on the agitation against the 
Union, 228, 229; letter on behalf of 
the Catholic peers. 242. 
Council, the Common, timidly petition- 
ing for justice, 291. 
Crampton, Judge, 712, 715, 718 
Crelaghs, the, of Glencarra. and Morgan 
O'Connell, 3S, 39 ; one of, at Tralee 
assizes, 39. 
Crime in England and Ireland, com- 
parative summary of a week's, 397, 
398. 
Cromwell, Ids Irish policy and its ef- 
fects, 187. 188. 
Crowley, Peter, the case of, 234. 235. 
Croker, J. Wilson, anecdotes of, 261 ; 
on government in Ireland, 358. 



Cumberland, Duke of, and Catholic 

Emancipation, 5<it>. 
Curran, anecdotes of, 261. 

Daly, Old Jehu, 199. 

Dan, Father, the Franciscan, and his 

bell, 350, 352. 
Darrynane, Abbey of, 27, 28 ; House, 
and its environs, 399, 400. 

Day, Judge, and O'Connell, 233 ; as 
judge. 261, 262 ; and Barney Coile, 
440, 441. 

D'Esterre, his antecedents, 436 ; 
quarrel with O'Connell and its mo- 
tive, 436, 437 ; parading Dublin with 
a whip, 437 ; letter to O'Connell 
and reply, 438, 439; duel with 
O'Connell, and death, 441-443 ; his 
widow, 443. 

Dingle, address from, and O'Connell's 
reply, 327 329. 

D'Isracli, and O'Connell, 613; O'Con- 
nell on, 613, 614 ; and Morgan O'Con- 
nell, 614 ; and Iris inextinguishable 
hatred to the O'Connells, 615. 

Doherty, Solicitor-General, threatens 
to wash his hands of it. 560 ; and the 
Doneraile conspiracy, 576, 577 ; his 
conduct brought by O'Connell before 
Parliament, 5S6 ; appointed Chief- 
Justice, 596, 597. 

Doniville, Sir Coinpton, defeat of, 481, 
482. 

Doneraile, alleged conspiracy of the 
Catholics of, 576; O'Connell at the 
trial, 577 ; acquittal of the prisoners, 
578. 

Douay, colleges at, 72. 

Doyle, Dr, sketch of his life and charac- 
ter, 524; extract from " Vindication 
of Catholics," 525, 526 ; examined by 
a parliamentary committee, 526-528; 
and bis starving countrymen, 597. 

Dullin Evening Post, the old. and the 
Kerry lad. 398. 399. 

Duel between Alcock and Colclongh, 
433; between O'Connell and D'Es- 
terre, 441-443; between Sir Charles 
Paxton and Mr Sidwell, 447-449; 
threatened, between O'Connell and 
Peel, 447, 448. 

Duelling the order of the day, 433. 

Duffy, Mr. 713, 728, 729, 738, 749. 

Duggan, John, notice of, and his 
notes of O'Connell's last illness, 756- 
762. 

Dyer, the villain, 445-447. 



■•'>; 







IXDEX. 



EDtJC.VTTOlf, unequal advantages of 
Catholic and Protestant Iiish, as 
regards, 33. 

Eldon, Lord, O'Connell on, 278, 324 : on 
O'Connell, 5(IG ; on the election of 
O'Connell, 561 ; on the admission of 
Catholics to Parliament, 565, 566. 

Ely, charge of the present Bishop of, 
303. 

Emancipation declared necessary, 163 ; 
O'Connell on, 278; Shelley on, 348, 
349 j George IV. and, 566, 591 ; sir 
Lytton Bulwer on the Act, 592 ; 
insufficient, 593; only one act of 
justice, :V.I4, 595; imminent, 561; 
achieved, 566; clause to prevent 
O'Connell taking his seat, 566 ; the 
Act disappointing, 5S7 ; Palmerston 
and Wellington on, ,">,S7 ; reasons why 
it should turnout disappointing, r.Nii, 
590. 

England, Church of, in Ireland, 83 ; 
and her American colonies, 91, 92; 
troubles in 1775, 103, 104; troubles 
in 1795-96, 107 ; prestige declining, 
538, 539 ; political discontent in 1831, 
598. 

Ennis, peaceful gathering at, 548, 549, 

Espionage, Government post-office, 138, 
139. 

Eyre, Mr Hedges, and the Papist rascal, 
404, 405. 

Fingal, Lord, and Mr Hare, 343-346 ; 
arrest, of, 346, 347. 

Fitzgerald, Bayard, 63. 

Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, his character 
and politics, 180. 

Fitzgerald, Mr Vesey, 542, 550, 552, 
«53. 

Fitzpatrick, Mr Hugh, trial of, 406- 
408. 

Fitzwilliam, Lord, appointment as 
Lord-Lieutenant, and recall, 165, 
166 ; and Government, 167-169 ; and 
the Beresfords, 170. 

Flood, John, his accomplishments and 
suspicious doings, 486 ; captures a 
smuggler, hut contradicts his own 
evidence in court, 486-488. 

Foster, Judge, and Denis Halligan, 264, 
265. 

Fox, Charles James, on English foreign 
policy, 64 ; on trial of Hardy, &c, 
86 ; letter on the evils of Irish ad- 
ministration, 137 ; answer to Grat- 
tan's letter, 145 ; on the Regency 



question, 150; on political liberty, 
165; clear ideas of Irish policy, 211, 
212, 215 ; on the Union, 216 ; O'Con- 
nell's reminiscences of, 238; and 

Prince of Wales, 363 ; Mrs Fitzhcr- 

bert and George IV., -176. 
Fox, Mr Luke, admirable letter of, 221- 

226. 
France and its leaders during the 

Revolution. 62, 63; described socially 

by Burke 67. 
Franklin, Benjamin, sketch of his life, 

94 ; on a debate in the Lords, 95, !K>. 
Fraser's Magazine on populating Ire- 
land, xiv. ; on governing Ireland, xv. 
Freeholders, the forty-shilling, 270. 
Friends, Society of, and O'Connell, 695, 

696 ; and the Irish famine, 748. 
Fry, Mrs, Archbishop Manning on, 330. 

Galwat, address to Grattan of the 

men of, 173. 
Georges, the, 87, 88 ; Ireland under the 

first two, 373. 
George II. and the sermons at court, 
89; Inland under, 373. 

George III., Mr Harwood's observations 
on, 15; compared with Louis XVIII., 
65; reign, 87; liis advantages, 88; 
his Toryism, 8!> ; his first speech and 
Frederick the Great, 89 ; letter to 
North, 101 ; on the demands of 
America, 105 ; on \ ublic business, 
107 ; on Ireland, 107 ; attack on, 109, 
110; on Irish marquises, 121; on his 
American subjects, 122 ; speech of, 
on state of England, in 1792, 164 ; 
washes his hands, 243. 

George IV., riotous meetings to ad- 
dress, on his accession, 454-456 ; 
sails for Ireland, and dissipation on 
the voyage, 470 ; his progress through 
Dublin and reception, 471—473 ; end 
of visit, 474; and O'Connell, 474, 
475 ; and Mr Fox, 476 ; tit of spleen, 
499 ; and Catholic Emancipation, 
566, 591 ; and bis revenge on O'Con- 
nell, 591 . (.S'cc Prince of AVales. ) 

Gladstone, Mr, and his newspaper 
oracles, xx. ; and his alleged political 
motives, xxviii. 

Glascock, Toby, and O'Connell, 575. 

Gower, Lord Leveson, O'Connell on, 
5S6, 5S7. 

Grady, Harry, and the dragoon, 208 ; 
cross-examining the five soldiers, 210. 

Grattan, his patriotism, 126 ; early 



1 

1 



career, 127 ; election to Parliament, 
1*27; on penal code, 134, 135; Fitz- 
1'atrick on, 138 ; success of his ap- 
peal, 145 ; his address on repeal of 
the Act of 6 Geo. I., 146 ; rewarded 
for his services, 14ii ; letter on Ii i-li 
affairs, 152-156 ; on bribery in the 
Government, 105, 106 ; retirement of, 
180 ; O'Connell's opinion of, 236. 237 ; 
on English legislation ro\s".s- divine, 
348, 349 ; panegyric on, by O'Connell, 
453, 451. 

Grattan, Henry, son of the preceding, 
531. 

Gray, Sir John, 713, 714 ; his narra- 
tive, 720-724. 

Grenville, his administration, 90 ; and 
unfortunate resolution. 91. 

Grievances, Irish, English disregard 
and treatment of, 140. 141. 

Grose, Captain, and the butcher, 319, 
320. 

Hamilton, Rev. John, his schemes and 

accomplices, 444-447. 
Hamilton, Mr Haus, Jesuitaphobia of, 

502. 
Hamilton, Rev. \V., case of, and the 

poor hen-girl, 322, 323. 
Hardy, trial of, 84, 85. 
Hare, Mr, and O'Connell, 344, 345; 

and Lord Ffrench, 347. 
Hart, Sir Antony, installation as Lord 

Chancellor, 489. 
Hawkesworth, Parson, and his lady, 

395. 
Henry, Mr Mitchell, on Justice Keogh, 

xl., xli. 
Hickson, Mr, 203. 

History, its repetitions of itself, 4, 588. 
Hierarchy, the Irish Catholic, loyalty 

.of, 30L 
Hussey, Mr, on English hostility to the 

Catholic petition, 364. 

Ignorance, English, of Irish affairs, 
vii. , xxi. 

Independence, Irish, causes of the ruin 
of, 146-148. 

Infallibility, Protestant, 463, 46S. 

Inns in the good old times, 318, 319. 

Intolerance, religious, in Ireland, 44, 
45. 

Ireland, Frowi'x Muyazine on the de- 
population and government of, xiv., 
XV. ; under British rule, 64-66, S2, 



83 ; effects on policy towards, of 
American war, 120; state of, apuzzle 
to English understandings, 142 ; 
letters on, 142, 143; her real ami 
sham wants, 143, 144 ; state of, in 
1795-96, 172, 173; on the arrival of 
Lord Cornwallis, 181, 186, 187 ; an 
appanage of England, 214, 215 ; the 
upper classes in, 217; ignorance of 
its state, 290 ; division the curse of, 
30o, 307 ; a party battle-ground. 357, 
358 ; J. "Wilson Croker on govern- 
ment in, 358 ; party government in, 
358-361 ; under the first two Georges, 
373; under George II., 373; under 
George 111., 374, 375; debt to O'Con- 
nell, 383 ; periodic attempts to con- 
vert, 496 ; new era in history of. 520; 
the four wants of, 655 . famine blight, 
717, 74S. 

Irelauders, the Young, 736, 738, 739, 
751. 

Irish, the Protestant charge against, 
xxviii., xxix. ; effect of trade restric- 
tions on, 19 ; loyalty of, 34 ; and the 
King of England, 64 ; the awaking 
of their national spirit, 136 ; and 
their grievances, 140 ; their poli- 
tical mercies and duties, 349, 350 ; 
driven desperate, 369 ; Mr Kohlon, 
370 ; brutal treatment of, by the 
English, 538 ; services of, neces- 
sary to Britain, 539 ; ingenuous sus- 
ceptibility, 474 ; unjustly blamed, 
476 ; their fidelity to the Holy See, 
740. 

Irishmen, the United, origin of the 
society, 161, 162 ; original principles, 
162 ; Protestaut leaders of, and Catho- 
lic deputation, 164 ; Mr Beresfoi d 
on, 170; and the French Government, 
175 ; its early leaders, 180 ; fifteen 
leaders arrested, 181 ; lesson they 
read O'Conuell, 247. 

Jack of the Roads, 20S, 313, 314. 

Jesuits, the, their distinction among 
the orders of the Church, 427 ; at 
Castle Browne, and the panic their 
presence created, 427, 428 ; the Duke 
of Leicester on, 429 ; Peel and, 430; 
the present Sir Robert and, 431. 

Johnson, on taxing the Americans, 97. 

Jones, Paul, his capture of the Drake 
sloop of war, 14, 15 ; his fleet and 
crew, 15 ; on the coast of Kerry, 15, 
16; treachery to two of his crew, 



/Si 



'■*"< 






11 



m 




ISDEX. 



797 



16 ; off Flamborongh Head, 17 ; the 

Irish, father ami son, 17. 
Judgment, private, light of, English 

theory and practice, 20. 
Justice, administration of, in Kerry. 

40; in Ireland, in the end of last 

century, 395-397. 

Kane, Cousin, 113, 114. 

Kelhurne, Rev. Mr, his strong lan- 
guage, 1(52, 1G3 

Keller, Jerry, his encouragement of 
the young O'Connell, 203 ; and the 
burglar, 203, 204 ; and Jiaron Smith, 
390; and Norcott, the preteuder, 390, 
391 ; in poverty. 391. 

Kenyon, Lord, 370. 

Keoch. John, O'Connell on, 307-309. 

Keogh, Mr Justice, xxx.-xxxv. ; Mi- 
Mitchell Henry on his Galway judg- 
ment, xl., xli. 

Kerry, wrecking and smuggling in, 18; 
ethics, 19 ; justice in, 40 ; early en- 
Iightenment of, 49 ; travelling in, 
199, 200, 207 ; roads and hotels, 200. 

Kilniainham. meeting at, 454 : military 
called in, 450 ; counter meeting, 450, 
457. 

Kingsborotrgh, Lord, the eccentric, 
237. 



Ladies, the, who locked up their hus- 
bands, 606. 

Land Bill, the recent, xxiii. 

Landlords, the absentee, xxiii. 

Landor, Walter Savage, letter from 
O'Connell, 403. 

Lanigan. l)r, letter on the United Irish- 
men, 175 ; and the Veto, 300 ; on 
Quarantotti's rescript, 420. 

Lawless. Honest Jack, 531 ; and the 
priest, 559. 

Laws, penal, against Catholics, brief 
account of, 22-24 ; as regards right 
of tutorship, 35 ; Burke on relaxing, 
133 ; Grattan on, 134, 135 ; relaxa- 
tions under George III.. 335. 

Leadbetter, Mrs, testimony of, 192-194. 

Leeky, Mr. essay on O'Connell, viii.-x. 

Lees. Sir Harcourt, the absent-present, 
457. 

Legion, the thundering, 34. 

Leinster, Duke of, his declaration, 502. 

L'Estrange, Rev. Mr, on the Catholic 
regiments, 513. 

Letters of O'Connell to Dr MacHale, 



517, 518, 599-5G1, 609-611, 613, 616 
622, 62S, 035-039, 642-044, 046, 04s' 
649, 651-655. 658-002. 5. OOli, 070 
672, 673, 074. 078, 009-701, 741 740 ■ 
from Dr MacHale, 033, 034, 044-040' 
050, 051, 662-605, 673. 

Lieutenant, the Lord, of Irehmd, 137 
138. 

Londonderry, Lord, on O'Connell and 
his crew, 612, 616. 

Louis XVI,, his heroic demeanour 
under insult, 68. 

Lou vain, college at, 71. 

Lowe, Mr, on the Irish fisheries, x. ; 
a poor Irish fisherman, xi. , xii. ; 
speech at Glasgow, xiii. 

Lynch, John, and Usher, 35, 36. 

Lyndhurst, Lord, on the Irish, 617; 
his descent, 617. 

Maoaulay on O'Connell's trial, 718. 
Maccarthy. poem on the incarceration 
of O'Connell and the Traversers, 
727-729 ; poem on the death of 
O'Connell, 772-774. 

MacCracken, brother and sister, and 
the faithful Catholic domestic, 101, 
162. 

MacHale, Dr, first letter from O'Con- 
nell, 518 ; his family, 520 ; professor 
of dogmatics at Maynooth, 521 ; ap- 
pointed coadjutor Bishop of Killala, 
his letters, lectures, and learning, 
522 ; still a tower of strength to Ire- 
land, 523 ; his health proposed by 
O'Connell. 618 ; speech on the occa- 
sion, 018-022. 

Magee, John, trial of, 408-419. 

Magna Charta, the boast of England, 
537. 

Mahon, O'Gorman, 531 ; in the House, 
532 ; and the Sheriff of Clare, 549, 
550. 

Mahony, Denis, and Father O'Grady, 
43. 

Manning, Archbishop, speech of, at 
International Union Congress, 330 

Mart lev, Mr, protected by O'Connell, 
251, '252. 

Mary, Black, 91. 

Matthew, Father, and Repeal, 6S0. 

Maynooth, proposal to establish, 171, 
172; question of admitting lay stu- 
dents, 275 ; minutes of conversation 
regarding, between Abbot and Kil- 
warden, 276, 277. 

Meath, the Protestant Bishop of, letter 




on the Catholic clergy and Govern- 
ment, 302, 303. 

Melbourne Cabinet, the, and O'Con- 
nell, 612. 

Mrmnry, the glorious and immortal, 
toast in honour of, 100, 481. 

Miley, Dr, on O'Connell's last forty 
hours, 764 ; in Rome with his heart, 
707 ; on public sympathy in Rome, 
768. 

Military, the excesses of, 1S2-1S4, 189. 

Mirahcau, prophetic utterance of, 62. 

Mitchel, John, 736, 737 ; on the Liber- 
ator after his release, 737. 

Moira, Lord, O'Connell on, 368. 

Montalembert, Count de, and O'Con- 
nell, 583, 584 ; Mrs Oliphanfs Life 
of, 584, 594 ; and O'Connell in his last 
days, 763 

Montrose, Duke of, on Ireland, 478. 

Moore, on the Prince of Wales, 363. 

Morgan, Crosbie, expensiveuess and 
death, 392. 

Murders, agrarian, 369, 370. 

Myers, Mr, of Roscommon, his conver- 
sion, and the grounds of it, 24, 25. 

Napier, Colonel, on O'Connell, 628, 
629, 

Napoleon I. and English smugglers, 
19 ; O'Connell on, 327. 

Neilson, liberal proposal of, 161 ; on 
the state of the Catholic question, 
103. 

Nichol, Mrs Professor, her recollec- 
tions of O'Connell, 696, 697 ; her col- 
lection of O'Connell's autographs, 
697. 

North, Lord, 87. 

Norbuiy, Lord, and his racket-court, 
249 ; and the butcher's boy, 250 : 
O'Connell's description of, 250 ; 
bearded by O'Connell, 251, 252; and 
Barry's trial, 407. 

Norbury, Lord, the murder of, 655, 656. 

Norfolk, the Duke of. the renegade 
I latholics and Dr Milner, 425, 426. 

No-Popery cry, the, 360, 361. 

O'Brien, Denis, and the judge, 40, 41. 
O'Brien. W. Smith, his first appearance, 

573, 571 , and Steele, 574, and 

O'Gorman Mahon, 575. 
O'Coual, John, at Aughrim, 29, 30. 
O'Connell, clan, annals of, 31. 
O'Connell, Daniel, his pedigree, 6-8 ; 

his father's family, 8, 9; his uncle 



Maurice, 9 ; grandfather, 13, 31 ; 
father, 13, 14, 18 ; childish memo- 
ties, 18, 21 ; affection for his mother, 
26 ; pride of family, 27-29 ; anec- 
dotes of his ancestors, 29, 30; date 
of his birth, 32; natural character, 
36 ; learning the alphabet, 37 ; his 
first schoolmaster, 37 ; fondness for 
ballads, 41 ; early studies and ambi- 
tion, 42; a boyish dream realised, 
42 ; thoughts when a boy of nine, 43 ; 
at school, 44, 45 ; recollections of 
school and childhood, 40 ; sent to 
Liege, 46 ; first acquaintance with 
England, 46 ; at Louvain, 47 ; at St 
Omer, 47, 49 ; early hatred of Eng- 
land, 48, 49 ; opinion of Dr Stapyl- 
ton, 51 ; insulted at Douay, 51, 52 ; 
effect on, of what he- saw under 
Reign of Terror, 52 ; departure from 
France, 68 ; early companions ; 69, 
70 ; schoolboy quarrel, 70, 71 ; and 
the Church, 72 ; on the French Revo- 
lution, 73 ; interview with Owen, 
74 ; at Lincoln's Inn, 75 ; in Cbis- 
wick, 75, 76 ; originally Tory, 77, 83, 

84 ; conversion to Liberal opinions, 

85 ; time of birth, \iS ; witnesses the 
attack on George III., 109, 110; 
fondness for the chase, 111 ; his 
temperate habits, 111, 112; and 
Cousin Kane, 113; attack of fever, 
114-116; first visit to Dublin, 110, 
152, 159 ; a United Irishman, 176 ; 
joins the Lawvers' Artillery, 176 ; 
early patriotism in 1798, 177-179 ; 
his account of his illness, 197, 198 ; 
narrative of l.is start on his first cir- 
cuit, 199 201 : first visit to Limerick, 
201 ; his forte, 201 ; cross-examining 
a witness, 201, 202; quality of his 
intellect, 202 ; ami the pint of whisky, 
202; and Jerry Keller, 203; his 
lesson in cow-stealing, 207; travel- 
ling to London, 207 ; posting to 
Dublin, 207, 208; Grady and the 
dragoon, 208. 209; first speech, 210, 
229-2?2, 234; liberality, 234; ex- 
tenuation of bis rough outspoken- 
ness, 234, 230 ; early personal ap- 
pearance 230 ; on Grattan and his 
son, 230, 237; on Pitt and Fox, 
238 ; modesty, 238 ; on the Union, 
239 ; chivalrous conduct on duty, 
241; a freemason, 245, 240; gloomy 
mood, which proved electric, 217 ; 
lesson in prudei,se, 247 ; saved by 




/i l 



iv- r': 

to 



1 



his watch, 248; the ground of hia 
success at the bar, 248, 250 ; and the 
case, 241); bearding Lord Nor- 
bnry, 251, 252 ; and the confirmed of - 

fender, 252, 25.'!; and thegoat-stealer, 
253 ; and the alleged bankrupt, 254 ; 
on circuit, 257 259 ; and Sergeant 
-Lefroy, 259,260; his liar-anecdotes, 
2' 10 -204 ; professional success, 205; 
fond of children, 266 ; manias, lm;7 ; 
Ins search fur pikes, 2!'.;. 268 ; 
his chief political work, 270; com- 
prehensive intellect, 273, 274 ; and 
the hierarchy, 274 ; on emancipation, 
278; mi the Veto, 278 ; on AV. Pole, 
2c0, 281; on Marquis of Wellesley, 
281; on Castlereagh, 281, 2S2 ; on 
the "hitches," 282; and fche agita- 
tors, 283, 2S4 ; strikes a new key- 
note, 285 ; rugged energy, direct- 
ness, and breadth, 280, 287 ; ex- 
horts to united effort, 288, 28S ; 
speech on the Union, 294-297 ; uses 
the words " Irish king," 297 ; re- 
commends publicity, 304 ; on the 
Edinburgh Review and William Cob- 
bett, 305, M00; honest denunciation, 
300; on the curse of Ireland, 306, 
307; attains to leadership, 307; on 
John Keoch, 307, 308 ; on the case 
of Spence, 315, 310 ; in Limerick, 317, 
318, 359; his tun. 318 ; affair of 
honour with Magrath, 320, 321 ; ap- 
pearance, 321 ; fame as a barrister, 
.'121 ; and case of the poor hen girl, 
322, 323; speech at Limerick in 1812, 
334 336; felicity of expression, 326, 
327 ; on Irish soldiers and Napoleon, 
327 ; address from Dingle, 327, 32S ; 
reoly, 328, 320 ; speech at the < lafcho- 
lic Protestant banquet, 330, 331 ; 
first, speech at meeting to propose an 
address to Prince of Wales. 334-330 ; 
second speech, 338-310 ; on "Welling- 
ton, 330 ; a main object with, 340 ; 
and Father Dan, 350, 352; on the 
Union, 353 ; vote of thanks in Cork, 
353 ; on Catholic and Protestant 
pledges, 305 30G ; on the assassina- 
tion of Mr Perceval, 300, 307 ; and 
the Irish widow, 307; congratula- 
tions on the spread of liberal ideas, 
371 ; on the Veto, 371, 372 ; on secu- 
rities, 372 ; on the Orange Society. 
375-381 ; aff-ction for his wife, 382 ; 
devotion to Ireland, 383; and the 
English Catholics, 383, 384 ; style of 




his speeches, 384 ; Shiel's sketch of, 
385-380 ; in his study, 385, 
about court, 386, 387 ; appearance, 
3S8 ; his democratic mil, 388, 389 ; 
as a raconteur, 389, 390 ; and the 
bank-clerk, 393, 304; ;;t Darrynane 
- out on hunt, at the table," 400- 
402 ; letter to Laudor, 403 ; power of 
apprehension, Btory illustrative of, 
404; and his Orange client, 404,405; 
and Mr Lees, 405; examination of 
Burrows Campbell, and defence of 
Fitzpatrick, 407, 408 ; defence of 
Magee, 400-410 ; on the panic against 
the Jesuits of Castle Browne, 427- 
420 ; public thanks and presentations, 
432 ; offends D'Esterre, 430 ; a man 
of peace, 437 ; correspondence with 
D'Esterre, 438, 439 ; duel witli D'Es- 
terre. 441-443; quarrel with Peel, 
447, 44S ; panegyric on G rattan, 453, 
454; at Kilmainham, 455 457 ; pas 
toral letter for 1821, 458, 459; and 
Shiel, 459, 400; and Catholic rights, 
401 ; his letters. 402; analysis of Mr 
Plunket's lulls. 402-465; presents 
George IV. with a laurel crown, 474 ; 
cursed by the King, 475 ; opinion of 
George IV-., 475; and John Flood, 
488 ; joke at Plunket's expense 
about Hart, 489; forms the Catholic 
Association, 400 ; secret of his suc- 
cess, 402 ; dexterous and desperate 
effort to make up a quorum. 403 ; at- 
tempt to prosecute. 498 ; home joys 
and sorrows, 409 ; in London, 504 ; 
under examination, 505; returns to 
Ireland, 507 ; increasing popularity, 
507, 508 ; attack on, for his conduct 
towards the forty-shilling freeholders, 
500 ; h;s good-humoured defence, 
510 ; going special, 511 ; at Wexford, 
511; and Mr Leyne, 511; and the 
formation of the new association, 
512 ; commencement of correspon- 
dence with Dr MacHale, first letter, 
517, 518; and the "Waterford elec- 
tion, 540, 541 ; address to the elec- 
tors of Clare county, 542 540 ; on the 
hustings. 550 ; at the poll, 551 ; re- 
turn, 552; chaired at Ennis. 555 ; an 
irritation to the authorities, 500 ; king 
to four millions, 501 ; refused a seat 
in the House. 507; pleads his right to 
sit, 508 ; refuses to take the oath of 
supremacy, 500 ; writes a second ad- 
dress to the electors, 569 ; the Times 






on his exclusion, 570 ; high spring of 
action, 571 ; reception in Clare, 572 ; 
his tact, 573 ; and the forty-shilling 
freeholders, 573 : anil Toby Glascock, 
575 ; re-election for Clare, 575 ; seeks 
rest, but cannot find it, 576 ; and 
Recused Catholics of Doneraile, 576- 
578 : a voracious cater, 577 ; ami the 
Beauforts , of Waterford, 581, 5S2 ; 
letters to the people of Ireland, 583- 
585 ; nominated King of Belgium, 
583 ; and Montalembert, 583, 5S4 ; 
his motto, 585 ; a power in the Eng- 
lish Parliament. 585 ; O'Doherty and 
Lord Leveson Gower, 586, 587 ; and 
George IV. again. 591 ; and the 
Whigs, 592 ; arrest of, 598 ; and the 
Hervey rioter, 602 ; his parliamen- 
tary rivals, 603 : his household brig- 
ade, 604 ; on the Whigs, 604 ; and 
—the reporters, 605 ; moves for repeal, 
606 ; at Westminster Abbey, 606, 
C07 ; at Canterbury, 607 ; on West- 
minster and St Paul's, 608 ; influence 
in the House, 611, 612 ; and the 
Melbourne Cabinet, 612 ; and Dis- 
raeli, 613-615 ; and Mr Raphael 
616 ; at a banquet at Tuam, 618 ; re- 
turned for Kilkenny, 628 ; makes a 
retreat, 629 : reception at Mount 
Melleray Abbey, 632; and Mr Vil- 
lains Stuart, 633 ; entertained in 
London, 639 ; speech on the occasion, 

640 ; refuses the Chief Baron's seat, 

641 ; on the four wrongs of Ireland, 
655 ; and the Tories, 6oG ; proposes 
repeal, 660 ; founds the Repeal Asso- 
ciation, 678 ; in 1840 and 1S43, 680 ; 
and his beagles, 681 ; at Cork and 
Limerick, 681 ; his travelling com- 
panions on Repeal, 682 ; at Ennis and 
Kilkenny, 682, 683 ; a month's Repeal 
engagements, 683; at Mullingar, 683 ; 
might have been king, 684 ; on the 
franchise in Ireland 684 ; in Belfast. 
685 ; unseated at Dublin, 686 ; and 
steam, 687; elected Lord Mayor, 6S7; 
first day in court. 688 ; and his offi- 
cial chain. 683 ; defence against Lord 
Shrewsbury, 6S8-690 ; on the tin eat 
of Peel, 692 ; at Tara, 693 : at Mul- 
laghmast, 694 ; fame on the Conti- 
nent, 694, 695 ; in FliigePs Dic- 
tionary, 695 ; and the money market, 

695 ; and the Society of Friends, 695, 

696 ; daily habits, 697 ; at Coventry, 
698 ; member of the Order of St 



d Mary, 698 ; mysterious 
proclamation and counter-proclama- 
tion of a meeting at Clontarf, 705, 
706 ; rumours of an indictment — 
shows signs of fear, 706 ; dread 
of imprisonment, 707 ; indictment 
served, 707 ; address to the peo- 
ple of Ireland, 708 ; and Joseph 
Sturge, 709; goes down to Darry- 
nane, 709 ; returns to Dublin, 710 ; 
is escorted to the trial, 711 ; at the 
bar, 715 ; in the House. 716 ; escort- 
ed to prison, 720 ; in prison, 720 724 ; 
gives and refuses audiences, 729-731 ; 
receives addresses, 731, 732 ; free, 
733 ; concludes a novena, 737 ; ova- 
tion and rejoicings on his release, 73% 
736 ; first troubles of his old age. 736; 
and Mr Porter, 739 ; and the Papal 
brief, 740 ; grief for death of Davis, 
747 ; at Cashel, 747 ; on the scientific 
famine commission, 747, 74S; attacked 
in the Times, 74S ; and the Duke of 
Cambridge's suggestion, 749 ; leaves 
Ireland, 750 ; bears bad news from 
home, 750 ; seriously ill, 751 ; in Eng- 
land, 752 ; goes through France, 753 ; 
his appearance and condition at this 
period, 753, 754 ; public sympathy, 
754, 755 ; at Genoa, 755 ; his attend- 
ant, 756 ; last days, 756-762 ; Mon- 
talemhert's condolencies, 763 ; Dr 
Miley's account of, 763, 764 ; account 
of Times' correspondent, 764 ; death, 
765 ; the faithful round his bier. 766 ; 
his heart, 767 ; funeral obsequies, 
767, 768 ; funeral eloge, 769-771 ; 
remains sent home, 771 ; Maccarthy's 
poem, 772-774. 

O'Connell, Maurice, 47 ; at school, 51. 

O'Connell, Daniel, Count, 10-13, 54- 
58. 

O'Connell, John, of Ashtown, 30. 

O'Connell, John, son of the Liberator, 
707, 712, 727, 751. 

O'Connell, Morgan, family of, 8, 9, 13, 
14, IS ; and the C.elagbs, 38, 39. 

O'Connell, Morgan, son of the Libera- 
tor, and D'Israeli. 614, 615. 

O'Connell, uncle Maurice, 9 ; and his 
nephews' education, 50, 51; and 
politics, 247. 

O'Connell, Mrs, 265. 266, 3S2, 383. 

O'Connor, Mr Fergus, and the piper to 
pay, 604. 

O'Connor, the schoolmaster, and Judge 
Fiuucane, 268, 269. 






I 



t W* 



m 






INDEX. 



O'Gorman, Mr Purccll, anecdotes of 
205, 206. 

O'Grady, Father, anecdotes of, 4:5 ; 
capital charge against, 44. 

O'Grady, Judgo, anecdotes of, 205, 208. 

0'(Jrady, Standish, at the play, 304. 

(> rtagan, Mr (now L ird), 713. 

Orangemen, the origin, principles, and 
early outrages of, 172. 173, 313, 314, 
316: the merely political existence 
of, 369 ; increase and intolerance, 370, 
371 ; O'Connell on the system, 375 ; 
on the origin of the system, 376, 377 ; 
original oath, 37* ; character of the 
association, 379-381 ; came off with 
the lion's share, 47* ; patronised by 
Wellesley, 478 ; favourite toast, 478; 
denunciation of the Pope and O'Con- 
oell, 479; andWellesley, 479; intimi- 
dation of Government, 480 : intoler- 
ance of, 4S1 ; their political ascend- 
ency shaken, 541 ; impossible to 
tranquillise, 505. 

Ostrich egg, the, laid in America, 100. 

Outrages, agrarian, the priests to blame, 
444. 

Owen, Robert, interview with O'Con- 
nell, 74. 

Paine, Thomas, to the memorv of 
160. 

Pa] rston, Lord, on O'Connell, 505 ; 

on the Ennis gathering, 548 ; on 
panting emancipation, 687 ; on Wei 
lington and the Catholic question 
500. 
Parliament, the Irnh, its composition 
and interests, 117, 11*; address of 
to the Prince of Wales, 150, 151 ; in 
artkulo mm-tiit, 152 ; a simulacrum 
merely, 212, 213. 
Parsons, and old Leonard, 682. 
Parsons, Mr, his dislike to attorneys 
263, '.'64. ' ' 

Peasantry, the, and the landlords, 370. 
Pi ase, Joseph, and O'l lonnell, 696. 
Peel, Sir Robert, Dr Kenny and the 
Jesuits, 429, 430, 432; threatened 
duel with O'Connell, 447, 448 ; and 
his armed constabulary, 440 ; on the 
lush, 603 ; in office, '680 ; and Re- 
peal, 602; fear of insurrection, 740 
741. 
Peel, Sir Robert (the present baronet), 
the Communists and the Jesuits 43l' 
Peers, the Irish Catholic, 270. 
Pennefather, Baron, 576, 578. 



Pennefather, Chief-Justice, 711 712 

715, 718. * 

Perceval. Mr, and Catholic Association, 

332, 342 ; O'Connell on. 335 ; policy. 

336, 337; his curious line of ;nu- 

m.-nt, 337, 338 ; assassination, 361, 

362 ; O'Connell on the event. 306 

367. ' 

Perrin, Judge, 712, 715, 718. 

Philpotts, Henry, on the Clare election, 

557, 558 ; suggests a wily plan, 55*. 
Physician, the, and bis unfortunate 

patients, 405. 
Pitt, Mr, his Irish policy, 166, 167, 
170; and the Union, 211; and parties 
in Ireland, 213 ; and the masses iu 
Ireland. 214 ; one object of his policy, 
214 ; and the upper classes in Ire- 
land. 217; O'Connell's reminiscences 
of, 238; duplicity, 244. 
Plunket, Lord, and the kites, 261. 
Plunket, Mr, and the Union, 227, 228; 
and the Catholics, 460, 461 ; his bills 
criticised. 462-465 ; looking sore at 
heart, 4*9. 
Pole, Wclleslev, O'Connell on, 280, 
281 ; attack on the Catholic Associa- 
tion, 331, 332 ; intei ference, 333 : 
O'Connell on, 335, 33G, 339. 
Politicians. 589. 

Politics and religion, xxvii , xxviii. 
Pope, the, authority of, xxviii. 
Popery, official account of its main 

tenets, 428. 
Portland, Duke of, his administration, 

135 ; his concessions, 145, 146, 
Power, liaron, suicide of, 302. 
Press, the bribery of, 148, 149. 
Protestants, the, and religious liberty. 
132. '* 

Turcell, the inexorable, 493. 

QUABANTOTTl's rescript, 426. 
(Question, the Education, ux. ; the 
Regency, 149, 150. 

Ray, Mr, 534. 

Rebellion, the Irish, its nature and 
causes, til-67 ; and the revolutionary 
spirit, 60 ; a Protestant movement 
122 ; the embers of, 208. 

Rent, the, collecting, 405. 

Repeal, movement for, 289; first agita- 
tion for, 202 ; and the upper classes, 
292 ; a national movement, 292, 293 ; 
and the trades' corporation, 293; one 
3 E 



bar to, 206, 297; petition fur. 297, 
299. 

Repeal Association founded, first 
meeting, 678; discouraging com- 
mencement, 679 ; success after- 
wards, 680 ; membership and Volun- 
teer card, 690, 691. 

Representati parliamentary, in Ire- 
land, 127 ; in theory and in fact 540. 

Rescript, the Papal, and the Irish, 740. 

Resolutions, the "witchery," 3i>4 ; 
O'Connell's speech on the, 366-368. 

Berieu; Edinburgh, on the Catholic reli- 
gion, 74 ; O'Connell on, 305 ; on the 
Association, 504. 

Renew, Dublin, 641, 6(2, 646-648. 

Revolution, the French, and the Irish 
Rebellion, compared and contrasted, 
61-67; O'Connell in, 73; anniver- 
sary of, 1701, 160. 

Rinuceini MS. the, on Kerry, 49. 

Riots, the Gordon. 106. 

Riots, Anti-Tithe, and the military. 
601 ; trial of rioters at Hervey, 602. 

Rockingham, his administration, 9] ; 
and address to Prince of Wales, 150, 
151. 

Roden, Lord, moves for a select coin- 
mittee, 657. 

Rosse, Hail of, of the one idea, 362. 

Russell, Lord John, on the Western 
Powers, in 1703, 165 ; on the trial of 
O'Connell, 717. 

Ryan, the sergeant, and O'Connell, 
631. 

SANDWICH, Lord, on the Americans, 93. 

Sum in. Mi. and the Union, 227; and 
Mr Scully, 406. 407 ; his prosecution 
of Magee, and O'Connell's reply, 408- 
419. 

Schools, Charter, their establishment 
and character, 33-35. 

Schoolmasters, the hedge and itiner- 
ant. :;:.. 

Scully, Mr, 406. 

SI ackleton, Mr, and his establishment, 
191, 192. 

Shanes Castle regulations, 112. 

Sheares, the two, and their republican 
fervour, 68, 60 ; their patriotism, 
69 ; fatuity, 70. 

Shelley on "Emancipation, 348, 349. 

Sheridan, C, letter of, 129. 

Sheridan, Dr, 342. 343. 

Shiel, attack on O'Connell, 459, 460; 
co-operation with O'Connell in pro- 



jecting the Catholic Association. 490 ; 
bis caution, 402; speech, 513, 514; 
his physique, eloquence, and appear- 
ance, 520; treasonable speech. 530; 
under a cloud for a tune. 530; a 
repealer, 530 ; at the Clare election, 
553-555; and Lord Althorpe, 006; 
" Richard 's himself again," 710. 

Shrewsbury, Lord, attack on O'Con- 
nell, 688. 

Sidmouth, Lord, on O'Connell, 507. 

Sirr, Major, and O'Connell, 177, 178; 
and anti-union meeting in the Dub- 
lin Exchange, 229, 230. 

Society, the Precursor, 648. 

Speech, the King's, for 1825, 499, 500; 
for 1829, and the sensation it pro- 
duced, 564, 565. 

Spence, Patrick, case of, 315, 316. 

"Squire, the Sham," 143, 144. 

Standard, the, on the Pope, and his 
resort to prayer, 431. 

Stapylton, Dr, and the young O'Con- 
neils, 51. 

Star, Brunswick; and O'Connell, 571. 

Steam, and the Irish question. 687. 

Steele, the head pacificator, 532, 533 ; 
ei.es down to Limerick with white 
flag, 683; courts prosecution, 707. 

Sturge, Joseph, approval of O'Connell, 
at the time of his indictment, 709. 

Sully, maxim of, on national revolts. 
67. 

Suspected, list of the, 1S2. 

Tara, Repeal meeting at, 603. 

Tenants, the Irish, xxiv., 217. 

Thiers, M., O'Connell on, 73. 

Times, the, on O'Connell's exclusion 
from the House, 570; and O'Connell 
in 1829, 5S1.5S2; attacks O'Counell, 
748. 

Tone, Wolfe, Shiel on, 530. 

Tooke, .1. Home, 85. 

Trade, Irish, jealousy of, 122, 123, 125; 
"Free, or this," 126; with colonies 
declared free, 126. 

Travelling in 1780 between Kerry and 
Dublin, 318. 

Traversers, the indictment of, 70S ; 
sketches of, 712-715; escorted to 
prison, 719; in prison, 720-721, 726, 
728. 

Trials, the monster, special jury at, 
709,710; commencement, 710; the 
judges, the Traversers, and the coun- 
sel, 711-715 ; conclusion and verdict, 



715 716; sensation at the result, 

716 • the sentence, 718, 719 ; judg- 
ment reversed, 733 ;__ the arnv:d of 
the news iu Dublin, 733. 

Union, the, formally declared, 211; 
supposed advantages of. 214, 215; 
and the clergv, 220; facilities for ef- 
fecting 223; Lord de Clifford on, 223 ; 
and the bar, 226, 228; A. Young on 
its probable effects. 235; O'Cnn.-U 
on, 239, 294-297, 353; social effects 
of ' 289-291 ; how secured, 291, 294 ; 
after ten years, 293 ; its real cause, 
295 ; deceitful nature, 295, 296. 

Vanpaleur, Mr, and his tenants, 552. 

Vendee, La, during the Revolution, 

65, 66. „ 

Ventura, Father, eloge on O Conneil, 

Veto the, object in pressing, 276 ; the 
Irish bishops and, 277; English 
Catholics and, 277, 278 ; O'Connell 
on 278-280, 371, 372 ; resolutions of 
the bishops ou, 299, 300 ; its one ob- 
ject, 3tl. 

Volunteers, the, in Belfast and the 
Government, 124, 129, 130 ; spirited 
resolutions of, 131, 132 ; feared by 
Government,- 146, 147; suppressed, 
147 ; uniforms of, 176. 

Wales Prince of, address to, of Irish 
Parliament, 150; of the Catholics, 
334 ; supplanted by Pitt, 335 ; Catho- 
lic faith in, 362; O'Connell's opinion 



of, 362 ; Fox and, 363 ; Moore on, 
363 (See George IV. ) 
Warren, Sir Peter, on the Americans, 

93. 
■Washington, on the colonists. 95. 
Watf lford, the election, and its effects, 
540, £41 ; Lord, and his huntsman, 
541. 
Watson trial, the, and the English 

jury, 449, 450. 
Wedderburn, 93. 

Welleslev, Marquis, O'Connell on, 
281, 324; appointed Viceroy, 477 ; 
professed friend of the Catholics, 
patron of the Orangemen, 478; his 
marriage, 47S; and the Beefsteak 
Club, 479, 480; his life threatened, 
480. [See Wellington ) 
Wellington, regulations for general 
officers in Ireland, 351, 352 ; and Dr 
Doyle, 528 ; on the Catholic troops, 
556 557 ; his letter to Dr Curtis, 
562, 563, 564 ; alleged policy, 564 ; 
on Catholic Emancipation, 587, 588. 
Westminster, Canterbury, . and St 

Paul's, 6H6-608. 

Westmoreland, " the profligate and 

unprincipled," 414, 415. 
William III., and bis milliner, 369. 
William IV. and his anti-Irish fervour, 

604. . , 

Wilson, Professor, charge against 

O'Connell, 629. 

York, Duke of, his " so-help-me-God " 
speech, 499, 500. 



THE END. 



